Egypt sentences 20 to death over Kerdassa police killings

An Egyptian court sentenced 20 people to death on Monday for the killing of 11 policemen and two civilians in the aftermath of the military coup in 2013 against former President Mohamad Morsi.

Morsi was overthrown by the army on 3 July 2013, and a month later security forces brutally dispersed two pro-Morsi protest camps in Cairo killing more than 800 people.

Hours later a furious crowd attacked a police station in the Cairo suburb of Kerdassa, close to the pyramids of Giza.

A year later a Cairo court sentenced to death 183 Islamists but a higher court scrapped the verdict last year, amid international outcry who called for the retrial of 149 jailed suspects.

Of those 149, on Monday a Cairo criminal court sentenced to death 20 people, a judicial official said.

He added that a decision concerning the others would be made at another hearing on 2 July.

The death sentences issued Monday will be submitted to the mufti, Egypt's official interpreter of Islamic law, as his opinion is legally required but not binding.

The government later seized the attack on the police station to justify a wide-scale crackdown on Morsi supporters and other dissidents.

Egyptian courts have sentenced hundreds of Morsi supporters to death since his overthrow, but many have appealed and won new trials.

Morsi and other top figures of his Muslim Brotherhood have also faced trial.