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Egypt policeman jailed for killing detainees

18 March 2014 20:20 (UTC +04:00)

Judicial sources said three other policemen were also given one-year suspended sentences on Tuesday.

The Interior Ministry said the Brotherhood supporters had died during an attempted prison break after being suffocated by tear gas in the incident last August.

However, some sources say the men had died from asphyxiation in the back of a crammed police van while they were being moved to a jail on the outskirts of Cairo.

Latest figures show Egypt’s military-backed government has jailed nearly 16,000 people since July 2013, when President Mohamed Morsi was ousted.

The United Nations Human Rights Council recently expressed concern over the Egyptian security forces’ heavy-handed crackdown and the killing of peaceful anti-government protesters.

Last year, the Muslim Brotherhood movement was listed by Egyptian authorities as a terrorist group.

Human Rights Watch recently denounced Egypt’s interim government for labeling the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group, saying the move “appears to be aimed at expanding the crackdown on peaceful Brotherhood activities and imposing harsh sanctions on its supporters.”

Rights groups say at least 1,400 people have been killed in the political violence since the ouster of Morsi, “most of them due to excessive force used by security forces.”

Anti-government demonstrators have been holding rallies almost on a daily basis since the army toppled Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically-elected president. The demonstrators demand that Morsi be reinstated.