Egypt's Prisons Authority executed on Monday nine prisoners convicted of assassinating the former Egyptian Prosecutor General, Hisham Barakat, in 2015. A number of 15 defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment, eight defendants to 15 years, and 10 others to 10 years. The death sentence was upheld by Egypt's Court of Cassation against the prisoners in November 2018, rejecting an appeal against the sentence. However, the court did commute the sentence of another six prisoners from the death penalty to a life sentence. The defendants in the case were charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder, the possession of unlicensed firearms and ammunition, and the possession of explosives devices. In June 2015, Barakat was killed by a car bomb in front of his house in Cairo. The Muslim Brotherhood members were accused of the crime. The trial also began in June, after the defendants were sent to court on accusations of joining the armed wing of the Brotherhood and conspiring with Hamas in order to conduct attacks inside Egypt. A militant group calling itself the ‘Popular Resistance' claimed responsibility for the bombing. An Egyptian court in February 2017 designated the group as a terrorist organisation. The prosecution previously accused the defendants of planning the assassination of Barakat, with the help of an intelligence officer from Hamas. The plot was allegedly an act of revenge for Barakat's order for the dispersal of the pro-Brotherhood sit-ins in Cairo's Rabaa Al-Adaweya and Al-Nahda squares, after the ousting of the former President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.
