The Cairo Criminal Court handed hard-labour sentences to Al-Azhar clashes detainees on Tuesday. The court ruled to imprison four people for five years, six people for three years, and one person to one year.
The court fined all the defendants to pay EGP 2m and EGP 160,000 as compensation to repair all the damages they caused during the clashes. The detainees were accused of engaging in violent protests and setting Al-Azhar University’s Faculty of Commerce on fire in December 2013.
Previously in April 2015, the Cairo Criminal Court sentenced 63 other defendants to between a year and seven years in prison, 27 detainees received seven-year prison sentences, 23 received five-year sentences, three were handed three years in prison, and ten were given one-year sentences.
Photojournalist Ahmed Gamal Zaida was among Al-Azhar case defendants but he was released in May 2015. Zaida remained in prison for two years and was previously accused of covering the incidents and holding his camera when the police took him.
