The court also withdrew sentences of life in prison for 25 Brotherhood figures in the same case and ordered a retrial

Egypt’s Court of Cassation withdrew on Thursday the death sentences issued to Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie and 11 other of the group’s leading members in the case known publicly as Rabaa Control Room.
The court also withdrew sentences of life in prison for 25 others in the same case and ordered a retrial.

The defendants face charges of directing the movement of Brotherhood supporters across the country as part of a plan to “defy the state and spread chaos” after the violent dispersal of the Rabaa Al-Adaweya protest camp in mid-August 2013.

The plot allegedly included attacks on police stations, private property, and churches.

The top leader of the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood, Badie, 71, was arrested in August 2013. He has since been entangled in court cases that have seen him handed multiple life in prison and death sentences.

In April, a criminal court sentenced a total of 14 to death and 37 to life in prison in the case. However, 14 of the defendants were convicted in absentia and did not appeal their sentences.

Badie currently faces three death sentences for violence-related charges. He is being retried in two of these cases and is awaiting an appeals court decision that will either confirm the third death sentence or order a retrial.

The government has banned the Brotherhood, the group that ousted president Mohamed Morsi hails from, designating it a terrorist organisation.

By Ahram Online