CAIRO: Giza Criminal Court on Saturday sentenced 23 people to 14 years in prison and acquitted eight over mob killing of four Shiite Muslims in 2013, Youm7 reported.
In June 2013, a mob of protesters attacked and torched a house in a village in Giza, in which a number of Shiite Muslims gathered for a religious ceremony. The mob claimed the victims were trying “to spread Shiite beliefs,” according to BBC.
The victims were forced to leave the house, and then were tortured and beaten to death in the streets. Video footages were circulated showing people gathering around a body soaked in blood.
One of the three deceased was identified as a well-known Shiite Leader named Hassan Shehata.
The main defendant, Hamdy Bureik, was arrested in April 2014 by security authorities who intercepted his attempt to escape to Libya. In August 2014, Bureik and 30 others were referred to criminal court over charges of murdering and mutilating four people, where their first hearing was held in December of the same year.
Sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites in Egypt was virtually unprecedented prior to this incident, and the case was met with a great deal of public inflammation. A strong backlash from politicians and the media had hit the then-regime of former President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood group over “dividing Egyptians” and provoking “sectarian fights through hate speech.”
Additional reporting by Ahmed el-Gaafary