Egyptian court overturns death sentences for 149 accused of police killings

An Egyptian appeals court on Wednesday overturned the death sentences for 149 people accused of killing policemen in a mob attack on their station in 2013, a judicial source told the AFP news agency.

The court ordered a retrial for the defendants over the attack, which killed 13 policemen at a police station at Kerdasa near Cairo on 14 August, 2013.

The attack occurred on the same day as the so-called Rabaa massacre, when police shot dead hundreds of protesters demonstrating in support of Mohamed Morsi, Egypt's democratically elected president and Muslim Brotherhood leader who had been overthrown in a military coup weeks earlier.

Egypt's courts have handed down several mass death sentences targeting the Muslim Brotherhood, with Morsi himself among those sentenced to death.

The grounds for the appeals court ruling were not immediately available, but the court has overturned hundreds of death sentences over the past year, to the relief of rights advocates and frustration of some in the government who have urged fast track executions.

Seven people have been executed for political violence since Morsi was toppled, including six who were convicted of belonging to an Islamist militant group.

Last week, Ahmad al-Zend, Egypt’s justice minister, told Egyptian television that he would not rest until hundreds of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members and their supporters had been killed, in revenge for slain army and police officers.

The minister also said that he would resign from his post if the death penalties of jailed Brotherhood leaders were not carried out.