A Cairo criminal court issued a preliminary death sentence on Tuesday against four people convicted of forming a terrorist cell in Giza in a 2014 case. The court, which has set a 19 February session to issue its final verdict, has referred the sentence to the Grand Mufti, the country's top religious authority, whose opinion is legally required in death penalty cases but is not binding. The defendants were charged with forming a cell that aimed to carry out attacks on members of the judiciary, attacks on public and private property, and protesting without consent. The February court session will include verdicts for all 30 defendants in the case, which will be subject to be appeal. Last month, Egyptian authorities executed 19 people over two separate deadly terrorist attacks on military students in Kafr El-Sheikh and a military checkpoint in the restive North Sinai region, which has been a hotbed of terrorism since 2013.
