Egypt sentences 28 people to death for top prosecutor's murder

An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced 28 people to death over the killing of the country's top prosecutor.

The court also handed 38 others jail sentences of up to 25 years.

The accused were charged with the planning and murder of Egyptian State Prosecutor Hisham Barakat in 2015.

Saturday's sentences came after consultations with the

Grand Mufti, Egypt's highest religious authority, over preliminary death

sentences issued in June.

Barakat was killed in 2015

in a car bomb attack in Cairo after Egypt's powerful military toppled

former president Mohammed Morsi's elected government in 2013.

Morsi's Islamist supporters had vowed to avenge it by increasing attacks on pro-military officials and judiciary.

No

group claimed responsibility for Barakat's assassination, but police

later said the perpetrators were members of the outlawed Muslim

Brotherhood organization.

Morsi became Egypt's first

democratically-elected president of the country in 2011 after the end of

Mubarak's decades-long rule, but was ousted by Egypt's powerful army

following a mass uprising against him in 2013. Army head Abdel-Fattah

el-Sisi was subsequently elected president.