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Cairo — Egypt yesterday again postponed its verdict in the trial of the brother of the al-Qaeda chief, but sentenced 10 co-defendants to death for forming a “terrorist group”, a court official said. The verdict against Mohamed al-Zawahiri, whose brother Ayman al-Zawahiri heads the global jihadist network, was postponed until September 27.
Zawahiri was arrested in August 2013 at the height of a campaign of repression of Islamists in the wake of the army’s ouster of the country’s Islamist president Mohamed Morsi. He and 67 co-defendants are accused of having formed “a terrorist group linked to Al-Qaeda” and plotting attacks on government installations, security forces and Egypt’s Christian minority — all charges which his lawyer has denied.
On Monday, 10 of those on trial were sentenced to death for “joining a terrorist group, inciting the killing of police and army officers and attacking police and government buildings”, the court official said.
The judge forwarded yesterday’s death sentences for consultations to the country’s grand mufti, the official interpreter of Islamic law. — AFP
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