CAIRO (AP) — An Egyptian
court on Monday sentenced two policemen to 10 years in prison each for
the 2010 killing of a political activist whose slaying was one of the
sparks that led to the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak the following
year.
The sentencing was the
result of a retrial in the landmark case of the beating to death in the
port city of Alexandria of 28-year-old Khaled Said.
Photographs of the dead
Said's severely beaten face were posted on the Internet and became a
rallying cry against rampant police brutality under Mubarak.
The two policemen — Awad
Suliman and Mahmoud Salah — had previously been convicted and handed
sentences of seven years but that conviction was later overturned and a
new trial was ordered.
In a separate
development, prosecutors released the son of ousted Islamist President
Mohammed Morsi — Mubarak's successor — after he agreed to give samples
for a drug test. According to the state MENA news agency, 20-year-old
university freshman Abdullah Morsi was freed late Sunday after agreeing
to give blood and urine samples for the test.
The young Morsi was
detained on Saturday on suspicion of drug possession. He was with a
friend in a parked car that was searched by a police patrol east of
Cairo. Officers reportedly found two rolled hashish cigarettes in the
vehicle.
Abdullah's older brother, Osama, had rejected the accusations, calling them fabricated.
Morsi was ousted in July
last year by the military and faces a multitude of trials on charges
that carry the death penalty. He was in office for a year when he was
removed by military chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi.
Mubarak himself faces
two trials: a retrial over the killing of hundreds of protesters during
the uprising that toppled his 29-year rule and a second one, on charges
that he and his two sons took for personal use state funds set aside for
the upkeep and maintenance of presidential palaces.
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