Tarek Fouda, head of the Lawyers Syndicate in Minya, said lawyers of 683 defendants accused of storming al-Adwa Police Station decided to boycott Tuesday session to protest a mass death sentence issued against the 529 other defendants.
A press conference will be held at the headquarters of the syndicate in Minya, on Tuesday, to object to the legal procedures of the hearing and to uphold the rule of law, Fouda added.
Security sources told Al-Masry Al-Youm that Mohamed Badie, supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Mamdouh Mabrouk, director of the Administrative Office of the group, would also not attend the Tuesday court hearing in their trial over storming al-Adwa Police Station in Minya.
Badie will boycott the hearing from jail while Mabrouk, who has fled authorities, is still fugitive, the sources said.
Adwa city witnessed violent acts on 14 August coinciding with the dispersal of Rabaa and al-Nahda sit-ins in Cairo and Giza.
Minya top prosecutor Abdel Rehim Abdel Malek said the defendants are accused of protesting, murder, attempted murder, the use of force and violence against public employees, sabotage, stealing weapons, destroying government records, allowing detainees to escape, possessing weapons without a license, threatening public security and seizing public transport vehicles.
The same court sentenced 529 Muslim Brotherhood members to death over murder charges and other offences and acquitted 16 on Monday.
The death sentence ruling of the 529 Muslim Brotherhood members has caused an uproar in the international scene. “We are deeply concerned — and, I would say, actually pretty shocked — by the sentencing to death of 529 Egyptians related to the death of one policeman,” said US State Department deputy spokesperson Marie Hart on Monday.
“This is injustice writ large and these death sentences must be quashed. Imposing death sentences of this magnitude in a single case makes Egypt surpass most other countries’ use of capital punishment in a year,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Deputy Middle East and North Africa Programme Director at Amnesty International.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
