CAIRO: Egypt’s Court of Cassation, highest appeal court, accepted a challenge submitted by six defendants against their death sentences over charges of attacking Kerdasa police station in 2013, Youm7 reported.
The six defendants were sentenced in absentia in December 2014, and when they were arrested and then appealed the verdict, the sentence was upheld against them in February 2015.
The defense team of the 6 defendants denied any link between his clients and the incident or the Muslim Brotherhood group.
Judge Nagy Shehata, who is presiding in Brotherhood’s and activists’ cases, issued the death sentences against the 183 defendants in the Kerdasa case, in which 35 were tried in absentia.
Some 149 out of the total defendants in the case have already appealed the verdict; the court set January 6 to consider their appeal.
The defendants face charges of the storming the police station in Kerdasa in August 2013, in which 11 police officers were killed, and their bodies mutilated. A number of police vehicles were also burned.
The incidents took place after the dispersal of the pro-Muslim Brotherhood sit-ins of Rabaa and Nahda squares.