Egypt executes 9 people over assassination
February 20, 2019
Nine suspected Muslim Brotherhood members convicted for the 2015 assassination of Egypt's top prosecutor have been executed, security sources said Wednesday.
The nine were among 28 who were sentenced to death in 2017 for the central Cairo bombing that killed chief prosecutor Hisham Barakat.
Read more: El-Sissi: Egypt's new strongman
He was the highest profile figure killed by Islamist militants since the military in 2013 overthrew democratically elected President Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Egypt's highest appeals court upheld the death sentences against the nine accused in November.
Amnesty International earlier in the week had called on the government to halt the executions.
"Some of the defendants said they were forcibly disappeared and tortured to confessing to the crime" during their trial, Amnesty said. "Executing prisoners or convicting people based on confessions extracted through torture is not justice."
President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has implemented a severe security crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist militants since the ouster of Morsi.
The coup helped fuel a deadly insurgency in the country.
cw/aw (AP, dpa, Reuters)