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Egypt Sentences Top Islamist and Over 680 Others to Death Uproar in Egypt After Judge Sentences More Than 680 to Death
(about 11 hours later)
MINYA, Egypt — An Egyptian court here on Monday sentenced to death the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and more than 680 other people after a swift mass trial on charges of inciting or committing acts of violence that led to the destruction of a police station and the killing of an officer. EDWA, Egypt — Egyptian courts on Monday delivered devastating new blows to both the Islamist and liberal opponents of the new military-backed government.
The verdict, after a trial lasting only a few minutes, came just a month after the same judge drew condemnation from around the world for sentencing 529 other people to death in a similarly lightning-fast mass trial. The judge, Sayedd Yousef, affirmed the death sentences Monday of about 40 of the defendants in that mass trial and commuted the others to life in prison, which is understood here to mean 25 years. A court in Minya, a provincial capital, sentenced to death the top spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood along with more than 680others in connection with the killing of a single police officer during a riot here last summer, while a court in the capital banned the activities of the most effective left-leaning protest group, the April 6 movement, on espionage charges.
The verdicts Monday and last month are subject to appeal. Both sets of trials involved sentences in absentia for many defendants who are still at large, and if they are arrested all will receive a retrial. But there has been little, if any, public criticism of the decisions from within the Egyptian judiciary, once regarded as a bastion of relative liberalism within Egypt’s authoritarian system. The rulings were the clearest evidence yet of the judiciary’s energetic support for the new government’s crackdown on dissent of all kinds in the aftermath of the military ouster last summer of Egypt’s only fairly elected president, Mohamed Morsi of the Brotherhood.
The speed and scale of the latest batch of sentences, in defiance of international outrage at the earlier one, appeared to underscore the judiciary’s energetic support for the new military-led government’s sweeping crackdown on its political opponents, including Islamist supporters of the ousted President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood as well as more liberal groups. The mass death sentence, announced after a cursory trial of a few sessions lasting just minutes, was the second of its kind from the same court in the space of a month, and it drew condemnation from the White House as well as international rights groups. The reaction threatened to embarrass the new government just as its foreign minister, Nabil Fahmy, was visiting Washington on a mission to persuade the Obama administration to unlock millions of dollars in aid suspended after the military takeover.
In a separate ruling on Monday, a Cairo court banned the activities of the April 6 group, a liberal organization that spearheaded the revolt against President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. The group continued its work opposing police brutality and pushing for democratic reforms under Mr. Morsi, and it has continued to defend the right to dissent since his military ouster last summer. Yet here in Edwa, a town of a few thousand where at least one member of every extended family appears to have been sentenced to death on Monday morning, anger at the sweeping verdict mixed with wonder at the apparent dysfunction of the courts and police. With only a small portion of the defendants in custody — and some living openly at home in Edwa — many residents said they took the verdict as a politicized threat meant to intimidate the Islamist opposition and argued that the executions could never take place without triggering an insurrection.
On Monday, a Cairo court ruled that the group had been collaborating with foreign powers and “committing acts that distort the image of the Egyptian state,” according to the official state newspaper. “We are living in absurdity,” said Mohamed Abdel-Wahab, 60, the principal of a local school who was among those sentenced to death on Monday on charges that he participated in the attack on a local police station that led to the killing of the officer.
The group’s leader, Ahmed Maher, and a co-founder, Mohamed Adel, are both already serving three-year sentences on charges of organizing an unauthorized street protest against the new military-backed government. Both of the trials that ended in mass death sentences date to clashes that took place when the security forces used deadly force to break up sit-ins held by Mr. Morsi’s supporters to protest his ouster, killing nearly 1,000 people in a day, according to the best estimates by independent rights groups.
The rulings in the city of Minya, on the other hand, involved Mr. Morsi’s Islamist supporters. Both sets of cases related to a violent backlash against the police in August after the security forces used deadly force to break up sit-ins held by Mr. Morsi’s supporters to protest his ouster, killing as many as 1,000 people, according to the best estimates by independent rights groups. The province of Minya, an Islamist stronghold that was at the center of an insurgency 20 years ago, was a major flashpoint. Mobs stormed and destroyed several churches and police stations.
Minya, an Islamist stronghold that was at the center of a militant insurgency 20 years ago, was a major flash point of the violence, with Islamists attacking several churches and police stations. Two of Mr. Abdel-Wahab’s younger relatives were in custody and convicted in the case, and four others were still at large but convicted, he and his family said. They deny that any of their relatives participated in the attack. But in the case of Mr. Abdel-Wahab, who learned of his sentence from his weeping wife when he returned home from a party on Monday, the accusations are particularly implausible. He is a survivor of multiple heart operations and he is visibly feeble. He insisted that doctors had forbidden him to walk up stairs or inhale smoke, much less battle tear gas and bullets to ransack a police station. He pulled up his jalabiya to show surgical scars on both calves.
In each of the batches of sentences issued Monday and last month, however, only one police officer was alleged to have been killed, and none of those sentenced to death on Monday was charged with participating in his murder. Many of those punished, including Mohamed Badie, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, were sentenced to death for lesser crimes, including committing or inciting acts of violence. “I am the one who broke into the police station and killed the police officer?” he asked, sitting in his living room surrounded by family.
Mr. Badie was in Cairo at the time of the attacks, and he repeatedly emphasized nonviolence in his public remarks in the period leading up the crackdown and the backlash against it. When he learned months ago that he had been charged with participating in the attack, he said, he immediately went to the police to explain that there must be a mistake. He said he told them that he was obviously too unwell to have taken part. And he said that their arrest warrant had listed his age as 45 instead of 60, and his occupation as unemployed. But the police insisted that the charges were correct and, inexplicably, allowed him to leave and continue his work at the school.
“Our peacefulness is stronger than their bullets,” he declared in a speech at the main Cairo sit-in, a phrase that became a Brotherhood rallying cry. It was unclear what basis the court found for linking him to the attacks. “Everything is a whim,” he said. “There is no rule of law.”
His death sentence marks another dramatic escalation in the repression of the Muslim Brotherhood. Mr. Badie, 70, who trained as a veterinarian and is known as the group’s supreme guide, is revered by hundreds of thousands of Islamists around Egypt as a religious authority and teacher. Those like Mr. Abdel-Wahab who were sentenced in absentia — the vast majority of the defendants — would be entitled to a retrial if they were brought into custody, and all the verdicts are subject to appeal. In finalizing last month’s mass verdict, the judge in both cases, Saed Youssef, on Monday confirmed the death sentences on 37 of those defendants while commuting 492 to life in prison — understood here as a term of 25 years. But if the verdicts are not yet final, rights advocates say the two mass death sentences are just the most extreme examples in a pattern of harsh, politicized verdicts supporting the new military-backed government in its sweeping crackdown. Increasingly, said Michelle Dunne, an Egypt expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “there seems to be no attempt even to construct plausible cases.”
If carried out, his death sentence would mark the first execution by Egypt of a supreme guide in more than six decades of often bloody attempts to suppress the Muslim Brotherhood. A supreme guide was sentenced to death during the crackdown on the Brotherhood when President Gamal Abdel Nasser took power in 1954, but the verdict was commuted to life in prison and the supreme guide, Hassan el-Houdaiby, was ultimately released. The death sentence against the Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, Mohamed Badie, 70, known as the supreme guide, appeared to mark a particular escalation. Trained as a veterinarian, he is revered as a religious authority by hundreds of thousands of Brotherhood members and supporters around the country, and, if carried out, his death sentence would mark the first time the Egyptian government has executed a supreme guide during more than six decades of often-bloody attempts to suppress the Brotherhood. In 1954, the government of President Gamal Abdel Nasser sentenced to death Supreme Guide Hassan el-Houdaibi, but his sentence was later commuted and he was released.
Although the Brotherhood was not formally legalized until after the 2011 revolt here, the group integrated itself into Egyptian civil society during Mr. Mubarak’s three decades in power. The Brotherhood ran schools, hospitals and charities, and fielded candidates who formed an opposition bloc in the Parliament dominated by Mr. Mubarak’s party. Security forces arrested Mr. Badie last summer, and he remains in jail in Cairo facing multiple charges of inciting violence in the aftermath of the military takeover. His conviction in the Edwa case, however, is notable because he was known to be in Cairo at the time of the attack on the police station. And what’s more, all of his public statements during the period leading up to the attack emphasized calls for nonviolence. “Our peacefulness is stronger than bullets,” he declared in a televised speech, in a phrase that became a Brotherhood rallying cry.
As supreme guide, Mr. Badie was a household name whose statements and activities were front-page news in Egypt, and the police refrained from jailing him even during periodic roundups of other Brotherhood leaders. The left-leaning April 6 movement also espouses nonviolence. It helped spearhead the revolt against President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, and it has been critical of authoritarianism and police abuses under Mr. Morsi and the new military-backed government, earning it the special enmity of the security forces. On Monday, a panel known as the Cairo Court of Urgent Matters found the group guilty of conspiring with foreign powers and “committing acts that distort the image of the Egyptian state,” according to the official state newspaper. Its members have repeatedly denied those charges, which have often been floated as rumors in the state news media.
But on Monday it was the mass death sentence that captured the most attention. The White House said the ruling “defies even the most basic standards of international justice.”
Asked about the sentences at an appearance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Mr. Fahmy, Egypt’s foreign minister, said that the alarm was exaggerated, suggesting they might be overturned on appeal. “Don’t jump to conclusions,” he added.  “Let the legal process follow through.” 
In Edwa, several residents warned that if the verdicts were left standing or were carried out, Minya would again erupt in violence.
“They must want to turn Minya into Syria and start a civil war, because that is what will happen if any of these death sentences is executed,” said Ahmed Omar, 37, a shopkeeper with two brothers who were sentenced on Monday. Both are at large — one working in Qatar, the other in Cairo.
Ahmed, the 33-year-old son of Mr. Abdel-Wahab, said he would take matters into his own hands if his father were put to death.
“I would personally blow myself up in the middle of the police station, and I am not afraid to say it,” he added. “There is no freedom,” he said. “It is if the revolution had never broken out.”