Egypt puts Muslim Brotherhood leader on trial

Egypt puts Muslim Brotherhood leader on trial

 

 

Wednesday, March 26, 2014
From Print Edition

 

 

MINYA, Egypt: The leader of Egypt’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and 682 others went on trial on Tuesday on charges including murder, their lawyer said, a day after more than 500 supporters of deposed Islamist president Mohammed Mursi were sentenced to death.
Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie, 70, and the others were being tried in the same court in Minya Province that condemned 529 members of the Islamist group to death, in what rights groups said was the biggest mass death sentence handed out in Egypt’s modern history.

Protests erupted after Tuesday’s trial began, with police firing teargas to deter hundreds of demonstrators. The UN human rights office said the mass death sentences contravened international law. The European Union and the United States also criticised the ruling, as did rights groups.” Yesterday was ... a death sentence for the credibility and independence of Egypt’s criminal justice system,” said Nicholas Piachaud, a campaigner at Amnesty International.