The Cairo Criminal court sentenced on Sunday 20 defendants to death during their retrial in the case known as “Kerdasa massacre”, according to local media.
The death penalty had already been issued in April but ordered the referral of the papers of those sentenced to death to the Grand Mufti for consultation. According to state-owned media Al-Ahram, the court sentenced on Sunday 80 other defendants to life in prison, another 34 defendants to 15 years, a minor to ten years, while it acquitted 21 defendants.
The case includes 156 defendants, whom in the first trial had received either death or imprisonment sentences on charges of storming in Kerdasa police station in Giza, killing 12 police officers, initiation of killing 10 others, destroying the police office and burning a number of police vehicles in August 2013.
After the first trial, the Appeal Court had refuted 14 death sentences in the same case and revoked a 10-year prison sentence for another defendant, thus ordering a re-trial.
The storming of the station took place shortly after the dispersal of the Rabaa Al-Adaweya sit-in by the armed forces in August 2013, following the ouster of former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.
Hundreds of defendants are being legally persecuted in Egyptian courts on charges of committing violence after Morsi was ousted, including Morsi himself and members of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) group.
Since 2013, a militant campaign targeting police and army has escalated since the ouster of Morsi, killing several security forces in the Sinai Peninsula, Cairo, and the Nile Delta.
