Egypt’s Court of Cassation upheld on Monday the death penalty for 12 people, including three key leading members of the terrorist-designated Muslim Brotherhood in the criminal case known as the Rabaa Dispersal Case.

The country's top appeals court also commuted the death penalty for 31 others in the same case to life imprisonment, with the abatement of criminal proceedings against one defendant, who is deceased.

Those receiving final death penalty sentences include senior MuslimBrotherhood leaders Mohamed El-Beltagy, Safwat Hegazy, and Abdel-Rahman El-Bar.

Criminal proceedings against another Brotherhood key figure, Essam El-Erian, have been abated after his death in custody in August 2020.

El-Erian had received the death penalty in the case.The verdict is final and cannot be appealed.

In 2018, a Cairo Criminal Court handed preliminary death sentences to 75 members of the Brotherhood in the 2015 mass trial which saw over 700 defendants in the case.

The defendants were charged by the prosecution with several crimes, including premeditated murder, attacking citizens, resisting authorities, destroying public property, and possessing firearms and Molotov cocktails.

Several defendants, including Mohamed Badie, the Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide, had been handed life imprisonment sentences in the case.

The case dates back to the dispersal of the Rabaa sit-in by supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in August 2013.

The dispersal left hundreds killed and thousands arrested on a variety of charges.

It also unleashed days of nationwide street clashes and attacks on security installations.

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