EGYPT HAPPENINGS

683 Morsi supporters sentenced to death in Egypt

By V.M. Khaleelur Rahman

The news coming from Cairo that the leader of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood Mr. Mohamed Badie and other 682 supporters of the ousted President Mohammed Morsi have been sentenced to death by a Judge in Egypt on Monday has shocked not only the members of the group which has been the target of raids, arrests and bans but also the entire world even though it is the internal matter of that country.The news paper reports say that it may drive youngsters to violence against the Egyptian state. Mr. Mohamed Badie was charged with crimes including inciting violence that followed the overthrow of Mohammed Morsi who is on trial on many charges. The same Judge also upheld the death penalty for 37 of 529 defendants sentenced in a similar case in March though he commuted the rest to life imprisonment.

According to reports, the 70 year old Mr. Badie appeared relaxed and joked asking other Brotherhood members to buy him the red outfit that prisoners condemned to death wear and said: “if they executed me one thousand times I will not retreat from the right path”.

All India Muslim Majlis-e Mushawarat, the umbrella body of Indian Muslim organizations, condemned the reckless and wholesale death sentences issued in Egypt. Its President Dr Zafarul Islam Khan requested human rights organisations all over the world, especially the UN and EU human rights commissions, to take note of the blatant violations of human rights being committed by the Egyptian putschist government and to take it to the World Court of Justice and to boycott it internationally.