EGYPT: GIZA COURT SENTENCES ONE TO DEATH, REFERS THREE TO GRAND MUFTI

November 9, 2015: An Egyptian criminal court sentenced a man to death in his retrial for the case known to the media as the “Kerdasa police station storming.”
The man, named Amr Salah Al-Fakharany, was among five others who were sentenced to death in May for storming a police station and killing 11 policemen in Giza's town of Kerdasa in 2013. Egypt’s Court of Cassation in October overturned the convictions of the defendants and ordered a retrial.
The attack on the Kerdasa police station took place in August 2013, shortly after the dispersal of two large sit-ins in Cairo supporting ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi. A total of 183 defendants were originally sentenced to death in February by a Giza criminal court. Thirty-four of those were sentenced in absentia.
On November 9, preliminary death sentences were handed to three defendants in absentia after being found guilty of joining a terrorist organisation, among other charges. The defendants’ case was referred to Egypt’s Grand Mufti, a senior Muslim cleric, for a consultative review as required by Egyptian law. (Sources: Ahram Online, 09/11/2015)