A police truck in Cairo, Egypt, December 17, 2012 (Photo: Reuters)
An Egyptian appeals court is scheduled to issue a verdict on 13 August in the retrial of four policemen charged with killing 37 people inside a police van in 2013.
In August 2013, 37 people – whom the ministry of interior claimed were supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi -- died of asphyxiation in an overcrowded police van while being transferred to the Abu Zabaal prison northeast of Cairo.
In March 2014, a misdemeanours court handed one policeman a 10-year prison sentence, and the three other policemen a one-year prison sentence each.
Three months later, an appeals court overturned the verdict and ordered a retrial.
Following the incident, prosecution investigated the case, questioning seven survivors of the incident and another 40 people including police, forensic doctors and a representative from the justice ministry.
The prosecution's investigations showed that, at the time of the incident, 45 people were inside the police van, despite it only having the capacity to hold 24 people.
According to testimonies from survivors, their lawyers and a forensic doctor collected by the media, police fired teargas inside the metal body of the closed overcrowded van, in which prisoners had already been held for up to six hours on a day when temperatures outside reached 31 degrees Celsuis. When policemen finally opened the van's doors, all prisoners but eight were dead.
The prosecution described the policemen's behaviour as "negligence, recklessness and lack of precaution and serious breach of what their job mandates regarding protecting and the lives of citizens, even if these citizens were defendants."
Egyptian police have long been accused of using excessive force and torture, and police brutality was one of the factors that triggered the January 2011 revolution that led to the ouster of long-time autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
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