185 sentenced to death for attacking police

An Egyptian judge sentenced 185 Muslim Brotherhood supporters to death on Tuesday over an attack on a police station near Cairo last year in which 12 policemen were killed.

The ruling is preliminary and subject to a lengthy appeals process. It also goes to the country’s top religious authority for approval although his opinion is not binding.

The sentence comes days after another court dropped charges against Hosni Mubarak over the killing of protesters during the 2011 uprising that ended his 30-year rule, Reuters reports.

The attack on the Kerdasa police station took place on August 14, 2013, the day that Egyptian security forces cleared two Brotherhood protest camps in Cairo, killing hundreds of people in one of the bloodiest episodes in Egypt’s modern history.

Of those sentenced, 151 are in custody, with the others being tried in absentia, a judicial source said.