| A Muslim Brotherhood member in a file photo, at Rabaa square, at a court on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt May 31, 2016. |
Thirty-three supporters of the banned Muslim Brotherhood were sentenced on Sunday to prison terms ranging from seven years to life over violent clashes that broke out at a protest in Cairo in 2014, judicial sources said.
The violence, which killed three people, erupted after the army’s ouster of President Mohamed Mursi, a senior member of the Brotherhood in Egypt, following mass protests against his rule.
The Cairo criminal court sentenced 17 people to life in prison and 16 others to shorter sentences, the sources said. A life sentence in Egypt is 25 years in jail.
Fifteen other people were acquitted in the same case.
The charges included joining a terrorist organisation, arms possession, first degree murder and attempted murder, the sources said.
Egypt banned the Brotherhood in 2013 after the army led by general-turned-president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ousted Mursi. Sisi took office a year later and thousands of the removed president’s supporters have been rounded up since then.