An Egyptian court has sentenced ten members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood to death. According to the state news agency MENA, the men wanted to carry out attacks on the police.
The men have formed a terrorist cell, the Helwan Brigades, named after a Cairo suburb. They are said to be part of a wider conspiracy against the regime of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
After mass protests, Al-Sisi came to power after the military ousted democratically elected President Mohamed Mursi in 2013. Mursi had emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Grand Mufti, the highest religious authority in Egypt, must approve the sentences before they are carried out. Last year, human rights group Amnesty International said that Egypt had carried out the death penalty 107 times by 2020. That was three times more than in 2019.
According to Amnesty, Egypt is in the top three in the world. Only in China and Iran were more people executed.
