CAIRO – Egypt handed down the death penalty to 529 people on Monday after a mass trial in which the majority of defendants were not present in court.
“The astounding number of people sentenced to death in this case is unprecedented in recent history,” said Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), at a news conference in Geneva Tuesday.
The 529 defendants were convicted of various charges, including membership of an unlawful organisation (the Muslim Brotherhood), incitement to violence, vandalism, unlawful gathering and the killing of one police officer.
All the charges relate to events in August 2013 after the Government of President Mohamed Morsi was ousted. Mr. Colville pointed out that this was several months before the Muslim Brotherhood was declared by the Egyptian authorities to be an unlawful organisation. The exact charges against each defendant are unclear as they were not read out in court.
Defense lawyers say that they have had insufficient access to the defendants and that the court did not consider relevant evidence presented by the defence.
According to sources present at the trial, among other procedural irregularities, the judge did not call on each defendant by name; some of the defendants who were in detention at the time of the trial were not brought to the court; and the judge did not ask about the legal representation of the defendants.
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