Badie to face military trial on January 11

Egypt’s military prosecution has scheduled the trial of Muslim Brotherhood (MB) leader Mohammed Badie and 311 of the group’s members and supporters, including two women, for January 11.

“The trial for Badie and the 311 others has been set for January 11 in [the north-eastern province of] Ismailia, over the arson of the Ismailia courts complex,” a military source told the Anadolu Agency.

Earlier this month, Ismailia’s public prosecutor referred the case to a military court for charges of carrying out riots and violence on 14 August, 2013, after the police dispersed the Rabaa Al-Adawiya and Al-Nahda square sit-ins.

The defendants are also being charged with attacking the court complex and setting the building ablaze.

The military prosecution included to the list of charges rioting and carrying out violent acts against police and military forces, which led to the death of ten people.

“The referral of Badie and other Muslim Brotherhood leaders to a military court is the first of its kind since the ouster of former President Mohamed Morsi,” a lawyer with Morsi’s defence team told Anadolu. “They were referred to a military court retroactively, and this is unusual,” he added.

The case was referred to a military court in line with a decree issued by Egyptian President Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi in October tasking the army with guarding public facilities and vital state institutions for two years.

In November, international rights watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) warned that such decrees risk “militarising” the prosecution of protesters and political dissidents.

HRW insisted that military courts, which operate under the mantle of the defence ministry, typically deny defendants’ the rights accorded by civilian courts, including the right to be informed of the charges against them, the right to access a lawyer and to be brought promptly before a judge following arrest.

The Egyptian Monitor for Rights and Freedoms said in a statement on Wednesday that 837 cases have been referred to military courts since the issuance of the presidential decree on October 27.