"History does not repeat itself, but people repeat history", a saying describing those who repeat their mistakes without learning from the past. The latest death sentences delivered to ousted President Mohamed Morsi as well as other MB leaders by a military court on charges of committing violence and riots brings to minds the scenarios of the fifties and sixties in all its details. On October 26, 1954, while late President Gamal Abd al-Nasser was speaking to a large crowd at al-Mansheyya Square, Alexandria, eight gunmen, apparently affiliated to the now outlawed group, opened fire at him and his aides. Nasser heard the bullets whizzing past his ears. Happily for him, Mahmoud Abd al-Latif, member of the Muslim Brotherhood, was a bad shooter even at close range. Nasser didn't flinch. Interrupting his prepared speech, he cried out, "'Let them kill Nasser. What is Nasser but one among many? My fellow countrymen, stay where you are. I am not dead, I am alive, and even if I die all of you is Gamal Abd al-Nasser." Within a couple of weeks following the failed assassination attempt, five hundred Brothers were in jail. On December 4, 1954, the then known as "Revolution Court" in Egypt sentenced six leaders of Muslim Brotherhood to death and seven others to life imprisonment. The defendants were later executed, and in 1966, the MB famous intellectual Sayyid Qutb along with two others was executed according to a verdict by the Supreme State Security Court over forming a terrorist organization. After 61 years, former Islamist President Mohammed Morsi and 16 other leaders were sentenced to death in a case related to the 2011 mass jail break. Another court sentenced the group's supreme guide, Mohamed Badie and more than 180 others to death in a way proving this group never learned from the past. Egypt has seen seven death sentences carried out and 246 overturned, with a total of 433 cases are still subject to appeal, out of 1,695 death sentences referred to the Grand Mufti since the June 30 Revolution, according to official reports. Death sentences that are subject to appeal in the Court of Cassation have been issued against 433 defendants, including ousted president Mohamed Morsi. The Court of Cassation may decide to confirm criminal courts' rulings, making them final, or revoke them. The death sentences issued against 246 defendants were revoked after their cases had already been referred to the Mufti for approval. The defendants appealed the rulings and the Court of Cassation accepted the appeal, repeated their trials and revoked the death sentences. Here, the difference between Abdel Nasser's era and now becomes clear. In Nasser's day, the verdicts against the MB group were implemented, but now we do not know the fate of such court rulings, especially those against the group's senior figures. Will these verdicts be implemented? Will the leaders of Muslim Brotherhood be executed like what happened in the Nasserite era? Will the state impose its prestige? All these inquiries are still haunting the minds of Egyptian grassroots with no decisive answers.
