CAIRO, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- An Egyptian court sentenced on Saturday a defendant to death and six others to 10 years in prison, in retrial over a terrorist attack on policemen and soldiers in Gharbiya province, north of the capital Cairo.
The prosecution charges the seven defendants with forming a terror cell in an attempt to obstruct the constitution and the law, prevent the state and public authorities from doing their work, assault personal and public freedoms and undermine national unity and social peace.
The session is a retrial of the defendants who received similar sentences in December 2016 but appealed.
Meanwhile in Cairo, a criminal court sentenced a man to death for killing an 82-year-old Christian doctor in September 2017.
According to the investigations, the 40-year-old man pretended to be a patient who came to the aged physician's clinic for a checkup and he stabbed the doctor to death once he entered the examination room.
The prosecution said the defendant embraced the extremist ideology of the Islamic State regional terrorist group, whose Sinai-based loyalists claimed responsibility for most of the attacks that killed hundreds of policemen, soldiers and civilians in Egypt over the past few years.
The execution verdict in Egypt is sent to the country's top Muslim cleric for his non-binding opinion and ratification.
Egypt has been suffering terrorist activities following the popular-backed military ouster of former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in early July 2013 and the later security crackdown on his supporters, mostly loyalists of the currently outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian security forces killed hundreds of terrorists and arrested thousands of suspects during the country's anti-terror war declared by Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the army chief then, following Morsi's ouster.
