Around 700 more supporters of Egypt’s ousted President Mohamed Morsi are set to go on trial a day after an Egyptian court handed down death sentences to over 500 co-defendants.
Some 700 supporters of the former Egyptian president, including Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie, are slated to stand trial at the Minya Criminal Court on Tuesday.
The Tuesday session will be held a day after the court sentenced 529 supporters of Morsi to death for allegedly killing two policemen during the violence that erupted after security forces stormed two protest camps set up by pro-Morsi protesters in Cairo last August.
The mass death penalties, which were delivered after only two hearing sessions, has drawn criticism of human rights groups, the United States and the European Union.
"On Monday, Amnesty International slammed the mass death sentences as “grotesque,” saying, “While thousands of Morsi’s supporters languish in jail, there has not been an adequate investigation into the deaths of hundreds of protesters.”
The Muslim Brotherhood has also denounced the court ruling as a “clear violation of all norms of humane and legal justice.”
Egypt has been experiencing unrelenting violence since the country’s first democratically-elected president was ousted on July 3, 2013. Hundreds have lost their lives in the ensuing violence across the country.
Since then, Egypt’s military-backed government has launched a bloody crackdown on Morsi’s supporters and arrested thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members, including the party’s senior leaders.
At least 1,400 people have lost their lives and thousands more arrested in the crackdown on Morsi’s supporters, according to Amnesty International.
