Retrial Set Over Muslim Clashes With Christians
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CAIRO — Egypt’s supreme court overruled a lower court’s conviction of only four of 96 defendants accused in deadly Muslim-Christian clashes last year.
The Cassation Court granted prosecutors’ request for a retrial, court officials said.
Twenty-one people, nearly all Christians, died in violence that erupted days after an argument between a Muslim customer and a Coptic Christian shopkeeper in el-Kusheh, 275 miles south of Cairo.
Feb. 5 acquittals of most of the accused and light sentences for those convicted had angered many in Egypt’s Christian minority. Coptic Bishop Wissa, whose diocese includes el-Kusheh, said the ruling would help quell Christian anger.
Christians, mostly Copts, make up 10% of the country’s 64 million people, who are overwhelmingly Muslim.
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