Alwaght- Amid massive crackdown on dissent, an Egyptian military court has sentenced 452 Muslim Brotherhood members to heavy jail terms over their alleged involvement in violent anti-government protests in 2013.
A senior Brotherhood leader, Gamal Heshmat, and 253 other members were sentenced to 25 years or life in jail. The military court in Alexandria sentenced the rest of the Brotherhood members to jail terms ranging between three to 15 years.
During the Tuesday sentencing, 250 out of the 452 Brotherhood members, including Heshmat, have gone to Turkey, and were sentenced in absentia.
Egyptian authorities have declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization after the country's first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi was removed from power in July 2013 by the then head of the armed forces, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the current president of the country. Morsi himself arose from the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Morsi’s supporters say the officials and judges running the judiciary are loyalist to and remnants of the Mubarak regime and are taking revenge on the revolutionary forces that toppled the dictator. The government in Egypt, led by President Sisi, has been carrying out a systematic crackdown on dissidents, particularly the supporters of Morsi. The harsh crackdown has left hundreds of Morsi supporters killed, many sentenced to death after speedy mass trials, and thousands more jailed in a move the United Nations humanitarian watchdog has described as “unprecedented in recent history.”