{{A court in Egypt has upheld 21 death sentences handed down to fans over deadly football riots in Port Said, amid fears of new unrest.}}<\/p>\n
Five of 52 other defendants were sentenced to life in prison for rioting while others received lesser sentences or were acquitted.<\/p>\n
Locals accuse the Cairo court of leniency towards the police over the riots, in which 74 people died.<\/p>\n
A crowd gathered in Port Said to protest at the verdicts.<\/p>\n
Fans of the Port Said team, al-Masry, were also said to be planning a demonstration at the city’s stadium.<\/p>\n
The military has been patrolling the coastal city this weekend in an effort to ease tension.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, at least 10 of Egypt’s 29 provinces were affected by an unprecedented strike by thousands of low-ranking police. Some units reportedly left their headquarters after sealing them with chains.<\/p>\n
They were protesting against being forced by the government of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi to confront protesters as well as a lack of protection from prosecution.<\/p>\n
The chief of security forces was replaced on Friday to try to defuse anger among police.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{A court in Egypt has upheld 21 death sentences handed down to fans over deadly football riots in Port Said, amid fears of new unrest.}} Five of 52 other defendants were sentenced to life in prison for rioting while others received lesser sentences or were acquitted. Locals accuse the Cairo court of leniency towards the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-6427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6427"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=6427"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=6427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}