News / Egypt

Egypt court sentences seven to death over bombing

Wednesday, 02 March 2016 6:37 PM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 02 March 2016 6:36 PM ]

Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood members and others gesture from the defendants cage as they attend their trial at the police academy on the outskirts of the capital Cairo on June 2, 2015. (AFP photo)

An Egyptian court has sentenced at least seven people to death over their alleged role in a deadly bombing in the northern province of Kafr el-Sheikh last year.

On Wednesday, the court in the country's second biggest city of Alexandria handed down the death penalty to seven of the Muslim Brotherhood members on charges of their involvement in the bombing in the Nile Delta city of Kafr el-Sheikh in mid April 2015.

Three of those sentenced to death were tried in absentia.

Five of the defendants were sentenced to life in prison. The court also sentenced two defendants to 15 years, and four to three years.

More than a dozen people, mostly from the now-banned Brotherhood, face charges of involvement in the deadly bombing near a military college in the volatile region.

At least two Egyptian military cadets were killed and six others wounded in the bombing which took place outside the city's football stadium where they waited to board a bus.

Over the past years, the militant group, known as Velayat Sinai, has been carrying out terror activities across Egypt, taking advantage of the turmoil caused in the country after the military ousted Mohamed Morsi, the country's first democratically-elected president, in a coup.

Members of the Egyptian police special forces patrol streets in al-Haram neighborhood in the southern Cairo Giza district on January 25, 2016. (AFP photo)

Last November, the group pledged allegiance to Daesh Takfiri terrorist group, which is mainly operating in Iraq and neighboring Syria.

However, the military-backed government blames Brotherhood members for carrying out attacks against security forces. The Brotherhood denies the allegations.

Since the ouster of Morsi in 2013, thousands of anti-government protesters, mostly Brotherhood supporters, have been sentenced to jail by civilian and military courts.

The ousted president himself and several leaders of his now-banned Muslim Brotherhood movement have already been sentenced to death.

Egypt’s harsh crackdown on the Brotherhood and its supporters has been widely condemned by international human rights organizations.

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