This week, an Egyptian court sentenced 529 defendants to death after a two-day trial. Finally, after being mostly silent through more than half a year of brutal repression by Egypt’s military regime, Western governments expressed ‘shock’, judging the sentences to be ‘unacceptable’. Whatever the consequences this farcical trial will have for Western policies towards the military regime in Egypt (if any), it is probably going to be too little, too late. Since the military coup on 3 July 2013 over a thousand persons have been killed, and the super-rich Egyptians who fled the country after Mubarak’s ouster are starting to make preparations to return. The military is so far succeeding in overseeing a counter-revolution that will bring Egypt back to the good old days, minus the Mubarak family and their close friends.
Read more in the blog post published March 28, 2014 at the New Middle East Blog.