Authorities in Egypt on Wednesday executed nine people convicted in the 2015 killing of the country’s top Prosecutor, a Security Source said.
An Interior Ministry source said the executions were carried out in a Cairo prison after court rulings against the nine became final, according to the source at the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of prisons in Egypt.
The source said the nine people were put to death a day after rights group Amnesty International had called on Egypt to halt executions.
The London-based watchdog said that “some of the defendants said they were forcibly disappeared and tortured to confessing to the crime’’ during their trial.
The source said after the executions, the bodies were carried to a morgue in Cairo where they will be handed over to their families.
In November, Egypt’s top appeals court confirmed death sentences for the nine people convicted in the June 2015 murder of the country’s chief prosecutor at the time, Hesham Barakat.
19 others were given varying jail terms in the same case.
Barakat was killed in a car bombing near his house in Cairo.
He was the most senior Egyptian official to die in a spate of attacks following the military’s 2013 ouster of the democratically elected but divisive Islamist president Mohammed Morsi following mass protests against his rule. (dpa/NAN)