Egypt jails 52 over Rabaa protests

Members of the British Egyptian community stage a demonstration outside Houses of Parliament on the eight anniversary of the massacre of civilians during a peaceful protest in Cairo’s Rabaa Square in London, United Kingdom on August 14, 2021 [Wiktor Szymanowicz/Anadolu Agency]

An Egyptian court yesterday sentenced 52 defendants to prison and acquitted five others in a case known in the media as the “Rabaa Al-Adawiya sit-in.”

The state-run MENA news agency reported that the Court of Cassation upheld the rulings issued by the criminal court in the province of Minya in July 2021, which included “three to fifteen year prison sentences against 52 people.”

It added that the court had acquitted five others after they were handed three-year prison terms. The defendants’ lawyers told the agency that the court had rejected appeals submitted by the 52 defendants, who were again convicted of “violence, public vandalism and attempted murder.”

The lawyers added that the rulings were “final and irrevocable.”

On 14 August 2014, the police and army forces dispersed the Rabaa sit-in by force, in a bloody massacre that claimed nearly 1,000 lives, following the ouster of the late President Mohamed Morsi and the coup against him in July 2013.

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