Egypt Tries 683 Morsi Supporters a Day After Condemning 529 to Death

A day after it handed down the most severe mass death sentence in the modern history of the country — and possibly the world — a court in the Egyptian province of Minya adjourned a second controversial trial until the end of April.

The mass trial of 683 alleged members and supporters of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, including the organization’s supreme guide Mohamad Badie, opened and closed on Tuesday. The judge in the case announced that he will deliver a verdict during the trial’s next and last session on April 28.

Defense lawyers for the accused boycotted the trial in protest at Tuesday’s death sentence. But that didn’t keep the hearing from proceeding as planned.

In terms of due process, even that was a step up from Saturday, when the judge in the trial of 545 defendants cut the hearing short after less than an hour following an argument with defense lawyers. He gave them 24 hours to file motions and announced a verdict 48 hours later, sentencing all but 16 of the accused to death.

“There were certainly differences in today’s trial. There were witnesses that were questioned as opposed to the first trial where the defense didn’t have a chance to present its case or to hear the prosecution’s evidence, and didn’t have a forum to discuss the merits of the case,” a Human Rights Watch (HRW) researcher working on Egypt told VICE News. “It’s impossible to imagine any sort of trial that meets international standards in which hundreds of people are sentenced to death at a single hearing, even if evidence is presented.”

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Only 68 of the 683 defendants were reportedly at the court on Tuesday. The rest were being tried in absentia, as were most of the accused in Monday’s verdict.

“Of course we still have significant due process concerns with this particular trial,” the HRW researcher added, referring to Tuesday’s hearing. “Any time you have hundreds of people and the evidence isn’t broken up in a way that establishes individual culpability, it raises significant concerns, particularly when considering a death sentence.”

Like those sentenced to death on Monday, the defendants in this second trial are accused of murder, attempted murder, incitement to violence, and the storming of a police station in Minya during violent clashes that took place in the country last year. These flared up in the aftermath of the deadly dispersal of two Muslim Brotherhood protest camps in Cairo, which left up to 1,000 Morsi supporters dead.

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A police officer was killed in the assault of the police station cited in Monday’s case, but nobody was killed in the second, unrelated, incident, raising questions about the murder charges cited by prosecutors on Tuesday. It was not immediately clear if the prosecution is seeking the death penalty in the second set of trials.

Monday’s verdict stirred international indignation and brought much attention to Tuesday’s trial, in which the former leader of the Freedom and Justice Party, Saad al-Katatni, is also a defendant.

More than 16,000 Egyptians have been arrested in recent months, many while protesting peacefully.

Demonstrations reportedly erupted following Tuesday's latest trial and police fired tear gas to break up the crowd. Speaking to VICE News, supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood have billed Monday’s death sentence as “legalized mass murder” and also called for “powerful but peaceful” protests for the next days.

The Egyptian government has often maintained the independence of its judiciary, but the recent trials drew condemnation even from some of the regime’s own supporters, like businessman and politician Naguib Sawiris, who tweeted his response to the Monday’s mass death sentence.

“I know that one must not comment on court rulings but it is impossible that anyone with a conscience can accept that a death sentence can be handed to 529 individuals in such hurry,” he wrote.

Shadi Hamid, a fellow at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center, said Monday’s sentence was a “transparently political decision" meant to keep pressure on the Muslim Brotherhood.

“It was self-evident to a lot of us on the outside that once the coup happened this level of repression would be inevitable. A lot of us knew it would be bad,” Hamid told VICE News. “That said, I think I think it’s gone well beyond."

The trial of 683 alleged members of the Muslim Brotherhood began in Minya on March 25, before being promptly adjourned. This local news footage shows the arrival of some of the defendants to the court. Video via El Watan News.

While the international community overwhelmingly condemned the mass trials and sentencing, Hamid criticized the US and EU for not imposing real consequences on the regime. Secretary of State John Kerry recently suggested the US might soon the resume military aid that it suspended in October 2013 after former President Mohamed Morsi was ousted in July's coup.

“You have a lot of people on the pro-regime side in Egypt who tried to reassure the international community saying that it would get better, that this is a temporary thing,” Hamid said. “But what has become increasingly clear is that the level of repression is continuing, it is not lessening.”

The accused in both trials will have a right to appeal the verdict after it is ratified by the country's Grand Mufti.

And while few expect Egyptian authorities to actually go through with the sentences and execute political critics en masse, the speedy trials of large numbers of Morsi supporters mark a significant escalation of the military-backed regime’s repressive tactics.

“It’s virtually impossible to conceive of these individuals being put to death. The general pattern that Egypt has shown when there has been an international outcry about a judicial outcome has been to find some kind of face-saving recourse,” the HRW researcher said, adding that the sentences will likely fall in appeal or the defendants be pardoned. “But you never know. Where Egypt is today, given what we have seen in recent months, it really is impossible to know.”

Follow Alice Speri on Twitter: @alicesperi