Egypt’s prosecutors have referred at least 271 members of the Muslim Brotherhood to a military court over alleged charges of attacking government buildings in central Egypt two years ago.
Prosecutors told Egyptian media outlets on Friday that the defendants were charged with torching and ransacking a court building, as well as a prosecution office in the city of Malawi in Minya province, in August 2013.
According to reports, no date has yet been set for the trial.
Judicial sources say Egyptian prosecutors are permitted to refer cases to military courts in cases involving charges of vandalizing public property.
In October 2014, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi issued a law that allows the referral of violations against state institutions to military courts.
Earlier this month, an appellate court in Egypt upheld death sentences against 183 Muslim Brotherhood supporters for their alleged involvement in the killing of 13 policemen in an attack on a police station in mid-August 2013.
Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have already denounced the ruling of mass death sentences as a grotesque example of the shortcomings of Egypt’s justice system.
This is while an Egyptian court dismissed a murder charge against the country’s deposed dictator, Hosni Mubarak, in connection with the killing of hundreds of demonstrators during the 2011 uprising that ended his decades-long rule.
In an election after Mubarak ouster, Muslim Brotherhood-backed Mohamed Morsi was elected president but was later ousted in a military coup led by former military chief and current President Sisi in July 2013.
The Egyptian government has been cracking down on any opposition since Morsi was ousted. Sisi has been accused of leading the suppression of Morsi’s supporters, as hundreds of them have been killed in clashes with Egyptian security forces over the past year.
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