International governments and human rights groups are in uproar following the sentencing to death of almost 700 Muslims, including Mohamed Badie, the 70-rear-old spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood of ousted elected former-president, Mohamed Morsi.
The mass sentence, meted out after the briefest of trials, is the second of its kind handed down at the same court in Minya, one of Egypt’s provincial capitals. It relates to a riot last year, in which a police officer was killed. Of the 529 death sentences handed out in the earlier case, all but 37 have since been commuted to life imprisonment
The rulings are the clearest evidence yet of the judiciary’s energetic support for the new military-backed government’s crackdown on dissent of all kinds and drew condemnation from the White House as well as international rights groups. The reaction threatened to embarrass the new government just as its foreign minister, Nabil Fahmy, was visiting Washington on a mission to persuade the Obama administration to unlock millions of dollars in aid suspended after the military takeover.
