On Monday, the Egyptian Emergency State Security Criminal Court ruled to execute 8 leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood against the background of the case known in the media as the “Platform Incidents,” the events of which date back to 2013, days after the army ousted the late president, who belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Morsi.
Among those sentenced to death was the Muslim Brotherhood’s guide, Muhammad Badie (80 years old), who has been imprisoned for more than a decade, and was sentenced to several other judicial rulings, including death, and the acting guide, Mahmoud Ezzat (79 years old), who was arrested in August 2020 in Cairo. After he had been in hiding for several years, as well as 6 other leaders: Mohamed El-Beltagy, Amr Mohamed Zaki, Osama Yassin, Safwat Hegazy, Assem Abdel-Majed, and Mohamed Abdel-Maqsoud.
The Supreme State Security Prosecution referred the “platform incidents” case to the State Security Criminal Court in April 2021.
The facts of the case and the accusations attributed to the defendants relate to the eight leaders organizing a gathering emanating from the Rabaa al-Adawiya sit-in on Al-Nasr Road, east of Cairo, all the way to the memorial on the platform, hundreds of meters away, “for the purpose of extending the sit-in area and completely paralyzing the movement of the city, to prevent the security forces from dispersing the sit-in in the future.” They expressed their desire to display and use force against state employees and citizens who disagreed with their views, and that “the eight provided the rest of the accused participants in the gathering with firearms, ammunition, and incendiary devices,” according to the case papers.
The investigations stated that the eight leaders laid out a plan of events for the rest of the accused and unknown others, and determined the role of each of them in it, while the two leaders, Osama Yassin and Safwat Hegazy, assumed the task of leading the crowd in the field, and it claimed the life of Officer Sharif Al-Sibai Abdel-Sadiq from the General Administration of Central Security Forces. He was killed by “unknown, hidden persons” intentionally, with premeditation and apprehension, as well as the killing of 14 citizens who happened to be there at times, or who were opponents of the group and their actions at the scene of the events at other times, in addition to the attempted killing of 10 members of the security forces and 7 other citizens.
The prosecution said that it established evidence against the accused based on the testimony of 57 people, including officers, employees, and citizens who witnessed the events, headed by the Director of Cairo Security at the time, Major General Osama Al-Saghir, and the Assistant Minister of the Interior for the Central Security Sector, Major General Ashraf Abd Rabbo Abdullah, according to what Al-Hurra’s correspondent reported.
The court also punished 37 others with life imprisonment, six defendants with 15 years in prison, and seven others with 10 years in prison, while 21 defendants were acquitted in the case, according to Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper.
Local and international human rights organizations criticize the death sentences and the crackdown on the Brotherhood since the Egyptian army overthrew Morsi’s rule in July 2013.
Human Rights Watch reported in 2015 that it documented the killing of at least 1,185 people during the protests that followed Morsi’s ouster in August 2013, and that security forces “systematically responded to the demonstrations with lethal force.”