A court in
Egypt has sentenced 21 female supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi to
11 years in prison.
They were found guilty of multiple
charges, including belonging to a terrorist group, obstructing traffic,
sabotage and using force at a protest in the city of Alexandria last month.
Seven are under 18 years of age and will
be sent to a juvenile prison.
Human rights groups criticised the
sentences, with one campaigner describing the verdict as madness.
The women and girls had taken part in an
early morning demonstration in support of Mr Morsi.
Relatives say it was the first protest
by the group, called the 7am movement, and that it was peaceful.
One family told the BBC their
15-year-old daughter was only passing by on her way to school.
A defence lawyer said the women expected
to be sentenced to a month in jail at most.
But the BBC's Orla Guerin in Cairo says
that instead they have been given longer jail terms than police convicted of
killing or seriously injuring civilians.
'Struggle
against terrorism'
The court also sentenced six Muslim
Brotherhood leaders to 15 years in prison for inciting the protest.
One report said the men had been tried
in absentia.
The verdicts come after the arrest of
dozens of secular activists in Cairo, including another group of women who say
they were beaten, harassed and left stranded in the desert.
They were demonstrating against a
stringent new law which all but bans public protests, part of a crackdown the
interim authorities have portrayed as a struggle against "terrorism".
Also some 17 clerics linked to the
Islamist movement to which Mr Morsi belongs were arrested in the Nile Delta
town of Gharbiya, the state news agency Mena reported.
They are accused of using mosques and
sermons to incite unrest against the army and police.
Mena also said that eight people would
be put on trial on charges of abducting and torturing a lawyer during the 2011
uprising that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak.
The defendants include Mahmoud
al-Khodeiry, a former judge close to the Brotherhood, Osama Yassin, who served
as youth minister under Mr Morsi, and Ahmed Mansour, a presenter for al-Jazeera
television.
Hundreds of people have also been killed
in clashes since security forces cleared two sit-ins in Cairo by people
demanding Mr Morsi's reinstatement in August.
BBC
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