Cairo (CNN)An Egyptian court triggered an international uproar Monday, confirming a death sentence for 183 defendants.
The
defendants were convicted of murdering 11 police and two civilians in
August 2013, Egypt's state-run MENA news agency reported.
Those deaths came in an attack on a police station.
It followed a massive, deadly crackdown by Egyptian forces on supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsy.
"Today's
death sentences are yet another example of the bias of the Egyptian
criminal justice system," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui of Amnesty
International. "These verdicts and sentences must be quashed and all of
those convicted should be given a trial that meets international
standards of fairness and excludes the death penalty."
"Issuing
mass death sentences whenever the case involves the killing of police
officers now appears to be near-routine policy, regardless of facts and
with no attempt to establish individual responsibility," Sahraoui added.
"So
far, 415 people have been sentenced to death in four trials for the
killing of police officers, while the case against former President Hosni Mubarak,
involving the killing of hundreds of protesters during the uprising,
has been dropped. To date no security officers have been held to account
for the killing of 1,000 protesters in August 2013," the organization said on its website. Amnesty International opposes the death penalty altogether.
Thirty-four of the 183 defendants were tried in absentia. All are permitted to appeal.
'Massacre and mass killings of protesters'
In
July and August 2013, hundreds of demonstrators -- perhaps more than a
thousand -- were killed by Egyptian forces in what Human Rights Watch
said "probably amounts to crimes against humanity."
"The
authorities have failed to hold even a single low-level police or army
officer accountable for any of the killings, much less any official
responsible for ordering them, and continue to brutally suppress
dissent," the group said. It issued a 188-page report titled "All
According to Plan: The Rab'a Massacre and Mass Killings of Protesters in
Egypt."
Since August 2013, 343 police personnel have been killed, Egypt's Ministry of Interior says.
The battle for Egypt
At the heart of all this is the battle for control of Egypt that has gripped the country for four years.
In February 2011, strongman Mubarak was toppled.
Morsy,
a longtime fixture in the Muslim Brotherhood, became Egypt's first
democratically elected president in 2012. But he was deposed a year
later in a military coup after mass protests.
Also
in 2013, Egyptian authorities cracked down on former Morsy supporters.
In December of that year, Egypt's interim government officially declared
the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. (Hamas, the
Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza, is a branch of the Muslim
Brotherhood.)
Egypt's current government, led by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has called for a "religious revolution" and asked Muslim leaders to help in the fight against extremism.
He has launched a war against terrorism focused particularly on the
country's Sinai region where an extremist group recently pledged
allegiance to ISIS.
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