An Egyptian court has sentenced 20 people to death for their part in the August 2013 massacre of more than a dozen policemen in a village west of Cairo.

The July 2, 2017 ruling caps three years of legal proceedings in the case, which in 2015 saw another court sentencing 186 people to death. An appeal against the mass death sentences was accepted in 2016 and a retrial was ordered.

The charges the defendants faced were related to the ransacking of a police station in the village of Kerdassah and the subsequent killing of the policemen.

The assault was believed to be revenge for the deadly breakup by security forces on August 14, 2013 of sit-in protests staged by supporters of Islamist President Mohamed Morsy, ousted a month earlier by the military.