Egypt's highest appellate court upheld the death sentences handed to nine defendants over the 2015 assassination of the country's state prosecutor Hisham Barakat, who was killed in a car blast in northeastern Cairo.
In July 2017, death sentences were handed down against 28 defendants, while 38 others were sentenced to jail. Some of the suspects had appealed their sentences.
Prosecutor General Nabil Sadek referred the defendants to the criminal court after they were charged with having links to members of the Palestinian Hamas movement and fugitive leaders from the Muslim Brotherhood.
They were accused of plotting to target some Egyptian state figures “to spur chaos and instability in the country in order to overthrow the state.”
The investigations revealed that the suspects formed groups, some of which were specialized in mental preparation for these acts, while others received fighting training in Hamas camps abroad. They were trained on building explosives and carrying out surveillance against important figures.
After the training was complete, they illegally returned to Egypt to commit their crime.
Investigations concluded that the defendants relayed their training to the groups and built the explosives that targeted Barakat.
After carrying out the necessary surveillance, they planted the explosives in a car in an area that they knew Barakat’s convoy would pass through. He, along with some of his guards and pedestrians, were killed in the attack.
In another context, the Cairo Criminal Court sentenced eight suspects to five years in jail in the retrial in the arson at Al-Azhar University in 2013.
