‘After an eight-minute trial a judge in Egypt has sentenced to death 683 alleged supporters of the former President Mohamed Morsi who was ousted in a military coup last July. Among those condemned to die is the spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been declared a terrorist organisation despite its tradition of non-violence and having won Egypt’s first-ever democratic elections.

The verdict after such a short mass trial is likely to discredit further the Egyptian authorities internationally, but they may not care about this so long as the military-backed regime can secure its power domestically. The sentencing by the judge Said Youssef on Monday in a court in Minya, 150 miles south of Cairo, was given a further bizarre twist when he reduced death sentences he imposed in March on all but 37 of 529 defendants to terms of life imprisonment.’

Read more: The death of justice in Egypt: An eight-minute trial, no arguments for the defence, and one judge sentences 683 people to death