An Egyptian court has decided to refer the papers of 10 people to the Mufti of the Republic to take an opinion on their execution in what is known to the local media as the “Helwan Brigades” case.
Among these ten defendants, one is being tried in absentia, and they are all among 215 people being tried in the same case before the Terrorism Department in the Cairo Criminal Court, and among them, 53 are being tried in absentia, according to what the French Press Agency quoted a judicial official as saying.
The same source told the agency that the 10 whose papers were referred to the Mufti belong to the Muslim Brotherhood.
The defendants were accused of assuming the leadership of a “group established in violation of the provisions of the law for the purpose of calling for the disruption of the provisions of the constitution and laws”, as well as carrying out acts of violence against policemen and their facilities during the period between 2013 and 2015.
Human rights organizations accuse the Egyptian judiciary of issuing politicized sentences against opponents since 2013. In April of last year, Amnesty International said that Egypt ranked third in the year 2020 on the list of countries that carried out the most executions after China and Iran, as it executed 107 Death sentences.
