Muhammad Badie, former Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) group, was handed a life sentence by Beni Sweif Criminal Court; 11 other members of the group were also handed life sentences in absentia. Seventy-seven others were sentenced to 15 years in prison in the case known as “Beni Sweif unrest”.
The charges against those sentenced ranged from inciting terrorism; leading an outlawed group; raiding and destroying government facilities, police stations, national security premises, the passports department and the Christian nun’s school in Beni Sweif, some 100km south of Cairo. This was among the series of nationwide simultaneous crimes committed by the Muslim Brothers and their supporters in August 2013, in retaliation for the overthrow of the MB regime that ruled Egypt in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring. Some 100 Christian institutions, churches, schools, property, businesses, and homes were among those attacked and set ablaze–four Copts were left dead. The Egyptian Armed Forces has restored all the churches and Christian institutions destroyed or damaged by the MB.
Watani International
1 October 2017