CAIRO — An Egyptian court has convicted three of the country's most prominent secular activists from its 2011 uprising for holding a rally without authorization and attacking police officers, sentencing them to three years in prison. Judge Amir Assem also fined them $7,000 in his verdict Sunday. Activists Ahmed Maher, Ahmed Douma and Mohammed Adel are founding members of April 6, Egypt's leading youth movement, which was one of the rallying forces behind the 2011 protests against Hosni Mubarak. They have continued to pressure consecutive governments for reform of the police, a representative political system and accountability of public officials. They are the first to be convicted under a new law that restricts protests, a law implemented by the country's military-backed interim government and widely criticized by human rights groups and politicians. Egyptian prosecutors on Saturday referred the country's toppled president to a third criminal trial on charges of organizing prison breaks during the 2011 uprising, spreading chaos and abducting police officers in collaboration with foreign militants. The new charges against Mohamed Morsi and 129 others pile on the legal onslaught facing the ousted Islamist president and his group, the Muslim Brotherhood, by leveling sweeping accusations, most of which carry the death penalty. Egypt's military-backed interim government has sought to portray the Brotherhood as largely responsible for the violence and militant attacks that engulfed the country following the 2011 ouster of Mubarak. The violence has surged following the popularly-backed military coup that deposed Morsi in July. – Agencies
