2015: Mass trials for Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt

CAIRO

In 2015, Egyptian authorities held mass trials for hundreds of supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi and his embattled Muslim Brotherhood group.

Several Brotherhood leaders, including Morsi himself, were slapped with death sentences for charges that included violence, espionage and jailbreak.

In June, an Egyptian court sentenced Morsi and nearly 100 people to death on charges of taking part in a mass jailbreak during Egypt’s 2011 uprising that ended the rule of autocratic President Hosni Mubarak.

The court also slapped Morsi with a life sentence on charges of conspiring with Palestinian group Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah to carry out “terrorist acts” in Egypt.

The same court sentenced 16 Brotherhood leaders, including Brotherhood deputy leader Khairat al-Shater, to death on charges of conspiring with Hamas and Hezbollah.

In August, a military court in the coastal city of Alexandria jailed 250 supporters of Morsi, including several Brotherhood leaders, for life on violence charges.

In the following month, an Egyptian court confirmed death sentences against eight Morsi supporters for violence charges.

In October, an Egyptian military court jailed 41 opponents, including 16 students, on violence charges.

An Egyptian court sentenced 14 people, including the Brotherhood’s top leader Mohamed Badie, to death in April on an array of violence-related charges. The court also slapped 25 defendants, including Egyptian-American activist Mohamed Sultan, with life sentences on similar charges.

Two months earlier, four Brotherhood leaders were sentenced to death over charges of killing demonstrators outside the group's headquarters in Cairo in 2013. Fourteen other Brotherhood leaders, including Badie, and his two deputies, were slapped with life sentences on similar charges.

Morsi's supporters insist the charges against them are "politically-driven".

Egyptian authorities accuse the Brotherhood, the country’s oldest Islamist movement, of condoning violence, a claim dismissed by the group.

In late 2013, the Egyptian government declared the Brotherhood a “terrorist organization” and seized its assets.

Military trials

Human rights activist Ezzat Ghoneim said that Egypt’s human rights record has deteriorated in 2015.

“2015 has seen unprecedented human rights violations in Egypt,” Ghoneim, an activist with the Egyptian Coordination for Rights and Freedoms (ECRF), told Anadolu Agency.

Ghoneim said a total of 5,256 civilians were tried by military courts in 2015.

“A total of 18 people were sentenced to death, while 1,000 others were slapped with life sentences,” he said.

“The rest were slapped with jail terms ranging between 15, 10 and 7 years,” he said, going on to add that 500 students were among those tried by military tribunals in 2015.

Ghoneim said that 16 people were also slapped with death sentences by civilian courts in Egypt in 2015.

The rights activist noted that more than 27,000 people have also been detained by Egyptian security forces in 2015.

Egypt has been dogged by turmoil since the military ousted Morsi, the country’s first freely elected president, in a 2013 coup following mass protests against his administration.

Since Morsi's overthrow, Egyptian authorities have launched a relentless crackdown on dissent that has largely targeted supporters of the ousted president and his Brotherhood group, leaving hundreds dead and thousands behind bars.

*Ahmed Amin contributed to this report.