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Egypt hangs nine for murder of prosecutor general

By AFP
February 21, 2019

CAIRO: Egypt hanged nine men on Wednesday for the 2015 assassination of the prosecutor general, judicial sources said, bringing to 15 the number of executions it has carried out this month.Hisham Barakat was killed in June 2015 when a car bomb struck his convoy in Cairo following jihadist calls for attacks on the judiciary to avenge a crackdown on Islamists.The nine men hanged on Wednesday were among 28 people sentenced to death in 2017 for involvement in his murder. Their death sentences were upheld in November by the Court of Cassation, which commuted the sentences of six others to life imprisonment. The sentences of the other defendants were not considered because they had been sentenced in absentia.