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An Egyptian appeal court on Sunday cut the sentences of 23 pro-democracy activists accused of violating the country's protest law from three to two years in prison, state-run al-Ahram online website reported.
The court also fined the convicted 10,000 Egyptian pound ( approximately 1,390 U.S. dollars) each and ordered them to be placed under police surveillance for two years after serving jail time, according to judicial sources quoted by the website.
The defendants, including a number of pro-democracy female activists, were originally sentenced to three years last October over their role in a demonstration on 21 June against the widely criticized Egypt's new protest law.
Under the new protest law, which was issued after the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last year, demonstrators who hold any protests without getting a prior police permit would be brought to court and punished with imprisonment.
The defendants were also charged with inciting violence, damaging public property, assaulting policemen and using violence with the aim of terrorizing citizens.
The sentence can still be appealed before the Court of Cassation, the country's highest legal authority.
Hundreds have been jailed for breaching the statute, amid an ongoing state crackdown on Morsi's Islamist backers that has extended to secular and liberal dissidents.
The Egyptian judiciary is criticized by many international human rights organizations and local opposition groups of politicizing its rulings in favor of the current pro-army regime. However, the government says it has no influence over Egypt's justice system.
Many of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood members and secular activists are in prison awaiting trials relating to inciting violence, conspiring with foreign powers to destabilize Egypt and killing protestors, some of which carry the death penalty. Enditem
