Egypt sentences 8 to death for 2013 attack

An Egyptian criminal court over the weekend sentenced eight people to death for their alleged participation in an attack on a police station in 2013.

The attack took place in a Cairo suburb during protests against the military coup led by current President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi that ousted democratically-elected Mohamed Morsi.

Six police officers were killed in the attack which followed the violent dispersal of peaceful sit-ins in August 2013 staged by supporters of Morsi a month earlier by the military which killed hundreds.

The court’s ruling on Saturday was referred to the country’s top theological authority, the Grand Mufti, which is usually a formality in cases of capital punishment.

Read: Sisi’s terrorism

Since the military coup, thousands of death sentences have been handed down to defendants who have been tried in mass trials as part of a crackdown on dissent by Al-Sisi.

Human rights groups have criticised the Egyptian government for its human rights record and for its shoddy trials with detainees often having their confessions extracted under torture and afforded no time in court to defend themselves.