An Egyptian court sentenced 183 defendants to death Monday, Egypt’s state-run MENA news agency reported.
The defendants had been convicted of murdering 11 police officers and two civilians in the district of Kerdasa in August 2013.
That attack followed a crackdown by security forces on supporters of former President Mohamed Morsy, which left hundreds of people dead.
Thirty-four of the 183 defendants were tried in absentia. All are permitted to appeal.
“Today’s death sentences are yet another example of the bias of the Egyptian criminal justice system,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui of Amnesty International. “These verdicts and sentences must be quashed and all of those convicted should be given a trial that meets international standards of fairness and excludes the death penalty.”
“Issuing mass death sentences whenever the case involves the killing of police officers now appears to be near-routine policy, regardless of facts and with no attempt to establish individual responsibility,” Sahraoui added.
Amnesty International opposes the death penalty altogether.
“So far, 415 people have been sentenced to death in four trials for the killing of police officers, while the case against former President Hosni Mubarak, involving the killing of hundreds of protesters during the uprising, has been dropped. To date no security officers have been held to account for the killing of 1,000 protesters in August 2013,” the organization said on its website.
The battle for Egypt
At the heart of all this is the battle for control of Egypt that has gripped the country for four years.
In February 2011, strongman Mubarak was toppled.
Morsy, a longtime fixture in the Muslim Brotherhood, became Egypt’s first democratically elected president in 2012. But he was deposed a year later in a military coup.
That year, 2013, Egyptian authorities launched a crackdown on former Morsy supporters, leaving hundreds of people dead. Following the crackdown, 11 police officers and two civilians were killed. Security forces blamed Islamist supporters of Morsy.
In December 2013, Egypt’s interim government officially declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. (Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza, is an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood.)
Egypt’s current government, led by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has called for a “religious revolution” and asked Muslim leaders to help in the fight against extremism.