A special court in Egypt has condemned Mohamed Badii, the supreme leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, along with seven other leaders, to death. Their convictions are related to organizing acts of violence labelled as “terrorist” during a Cairo sit-in in 2013.
This verdict was issued by the “First Terrorism Chamber” of the State Security Criminal Court and likewise targets Mahmoud Ezzat, Mohamed El-Beltagy, Amr Zaki, Osama Yassin, Safwat Hegazi, Assem Abdel Maged, and Mohammed Abdel Maqsoud, who were implicated in incidents referred to by the media as “platform events”.
The charges, filed in September 2021, enclose the creation of an unlawful organization with goals to halt the enforcement of laws, disrupt the operations of state institutions, and undermine national unity and social harmony.
These rulings are a continuation of the wide-ranging crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood following the violent dispersal of the Rabaa Al-Adawiya sit-in, which resulted in over a thousand deaths among the group’s members after the removal of Mohamed Morsi by the military.
While death penalties have been formerly issued against Badii and other prominent members of the movement, some have been overturned, and none have been executed to date. The Muslim Brotherhood has condemned these verdicts as “vindictive and unjust,” lacking in credibility and fairness, and has called for international intervention to halt their execution.
The international human rights community has criticized these sentences, pointing to the Egyptian justice system’s poor ranking (135th out of 140) in the Global Justice Project’s rule of law index. They accuse the system of politically targeting opponents, activists, and journalists.