The Court of Cassation upheld on Saturday a death sentence previously issued by a criminal court against one of the defendants convicted of attempting to assassinate a judge and joining a terrorist cell, according to state-run media. The convict is one of 30 defendants involved in joining a terrorist cell in the Awsim district of Giza, plotting anti-government activities, and assaulting public and private properties. The court also reduced the death sentence of another convict to a 15-year jail sentence and reduced the jail sentence of other two from 15 to 10 years, and upholding the 15-year jail for other 12 convicts. Egypt has witnessed an increase in attacks targeting state officials, police officers, and judges, who are involved in the nationwide crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood ever since July 2013 after the ouster of president Mohamed Morsi, a senior member of the Brotherhood. The incident was not the first attempt to target a judge. In June 2015, Egypt's Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat was killed by a car bomb in front of his house in Cairo. The Brotherhood was accused of the crime. The killing of Barakat, which marked the first of such a high-profile murder since 1990, sparked instantaneous response from the state. Shortly after Barakat's funeral, President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi announced expected legal amendments to take place to speed up trials and the enforcement of verdicts.
