A woman covers her nose as she walks past a fire started by students supporting the Muslim Brotherhood during a protest against the military and interior ministry at the Al Azhar University in Cairo’s Nasr City district yesterday.
Agencies/Cairo
An Egyptian court sentenced 119 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood of former president Mohamed Mursi to three years each in prison yesterday in connection with protests last October against his overthrow, judicial sources said.
More than 50 people were killed in the October 6 protests called by Mursi's supporters, one of the bloodiest days since his overthrow by the military on July 3. Judge Hazem Hashad acquitted six people in the case. They faced charges including unlawful assembly and thuggery.
The army-backed authorities have banned the Muslim Brotherhood and driven it underground, killing hundreds of its supporters and arresting thousands in the weeks after Mursi, Egypt's first freely elected president, was toppled by the military following mass protests against his rule.
Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the general who ousted Mursi, declared last month that he would run in a presidential election that he is expected to win easily.
In another case last month, a court in southern Egypt sentenced 529 Mursi supporters to death in a ruling that drew criticism from rights groups and Western governments.
The Muslim Brotherhood was Egypt's best organised political party until last year but the government has accused it of turning to violence since Mursi was overthrown. The Brotherhood says the group remains committed to peacefully resisting what it views as a military coup.
Many of the Brotherhood's leaders, including Mursi, are on trial. Mursi is charged with crimes including conspiring with foreign militant groups against Egypt, which carries the death penalty.
In a separate case, a judge sentenced a prominent Islamist preacher and politician to seven years in jail on charges of forging his mother's citizenship documents so he could contest the 2012 presidential election won by Mursi.
Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, a Salafist Islamist, was arrested after Mursi's downfall. He was disqualified from the election when it emerged his mother held US citizenship - dual nationality that meant he could not run.
Abu Ismail was sentenced to an additional one year in prison on Saturday for insulting the court.
In the southern city of Assiut, a court handed three Mursi supporters five-year jail terms and three years for 15 others over violence and rioting when security forces dispersed two Islamist sit-ins in Cairo on August 14, leaving hundreds dead.
On Tuesday, 24 students from Al Azhar Islamic university were sentenced to serve five years in prison for rioting during the constitutional referendum in January, while a minor was referred to a juvenile court.
The run-up to the referendum was marred by arrests of activists who campaigned against the new charter.
