Cairo: Egyptian authorities executed nine men convicted over the 2015 killing of the country's chief prosecutor on Wednesday, lawyers, activists and officials said.
The men were among a group of 28 who were sentenced to death in the case in 2017. Public prosecutor Hisham Barakat was killed in a car bomb attack on his convoy in the capital, Cairo.
Egypt blamed the Muslim Brotherhood and Gaza-based Hamas militants for the operation. Both groups denied having a role.
Since 2013, the year that then-army chief Abdel Fattah Al Sisi military ousted then president Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egyptian criminal courts have issued hundreds of death sentences.
Only a small proportion have been carried out.
The executed men were brought to a morgue where families - who said they had not been informed about the execution date in advance - waited anxiously for several hours on Wednesday afternoon to recover their bodies.
Ghada Mohamed El Abassy, the mother of one of those executed, said she had learnt about the execution from a TV report. She said she hadn't seen her son in more than one year because she was not allowed to visit him in custody.
A police official at the morgue said authorities don’t inform relatives before executions "for security reasons".
"We can’t tell them of the date, no one knows, even the prisoners are not told, they can commit suicide if we tell them," he said.
Officials at the morgue confirmed the executions had been carried out on Wednesday morning.
The latest executions took place two days after three policeman were killed in Cairo after cornering the alleged perpetrator of an attempted attack against a police patrol in the capital last Friday.
Sisi, who was elected president in 2014 and re-elected last year, says he is working to bring stability and security to Egypt following the turmoil of the 2011 uprising.