Egypt overturns jail sentence of 113 anti-regime civilians

Egypt’s Supreme Court on Wednesday annulled ten-year jail terms which had been handed to 113 individuals who were convicted of “carrying out violent acts” in the country’s coastal city of Alexandria in 2013, judicial sources have reported.

“Cairo’s Court of Cassation has approved an appeal against a ten-year jail sentence for 113 anti-regime Egyptians,” the source said.

In April 2017, Alexandria’s Criminal Court sentenced 113 defendants, along with 13 others in absentia, to ten years in prison charging them with “committing violent acts in Alexandria” following the dismantling of sit-ins of Rabaa Al-Adawiyya and Al-Nahda Squares in 2013.

The defendants’ lawyer lodged an appeal against the verdict in mid-May 2017.

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Following the overturn, the case is expected to be transferred to a new judicial circuit for retrial. Defendants still have the chance to appeal against the second ruling.

On 14 August 2013, Egyptian security and army forces forcibly broke up the sit-ins of the first-ever elected civilian President, Mohamed Morsi, in Cairo’s Rabaa Al-Adawiyya and Al-Nahda Squares, where 632 civilians were killed according to the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) in Egypt. Other local and international rights organisations claim that the number of victims exceeded 1,000 individuals.