Egypt court sentences 7 Islamists to death over killing policemen

An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced seven defendants to death over murdering 25 policemen in Egypt's North Sinai province last year, official MENA news agency reported.

Cairo Criminal Court delivered death penalty verdicts against seven Islamist militants, including prominent Islamist militant Adel Habara, over charges of killing dozens of policemen in an ambush in Egypt's North Sinai last year.

In August 2013, the militants attacked two buses sending recruits from their base in Tawilia village in North Sinai's Rafah city to their homes to spend vacation, by shooting the policemen excessively with RPGs (rocket-propelled grenade). As a result, at least 25 were killed and others wounded in the attack. Habara has already been sentenced to death in absentia over bomb attacks in the Sinai tourist resorts of Taba in 2004 and Dahab in 2006, which claimed the lives of 42 people.

The defendants are also accused of killing police personnel in the Delta governorate of Sharqiya as well collaborating with fanatic al-Qaeda group in Iraq, according MENA. Egypt has been facing a rising wave of terrorist attacks since the overthrow of former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi by the military in July 2013.

The attacks targeted security men and their premises in the restive Sinai Peninsula and then extended to hit the capital and provinces across the country. Enditem