ONE day after the release of Australian journalist Peter Greste, Egypt has sentenced 183 men to death after their conviction for killing 13 policemen in a verdict slammed as “outrageous” by rights group Amnesty International.

The policemen were killed in an attack on a police station in Kerdasa, a town on the outskirts of Cairo, on August 14, 2013. It took place on the same day security forces killed hundreds of demonstrators in Cairo as they dismantled massive protest camps supporting deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.

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The verdict came as a different court announced Morsi would stand trial in an espionage case.

The death sentence follows a preliminary verdict issued in December against 188 defendants in a mass trial. Of that number, two were acquitted, a minor was sentenced to 10 years in jail and two were found dead.

The verdict, which can be appealed, came after the initial sentences were sent to the grand mufti, the government’s official interpreter of Islamic law, for ratification.

It’s also been slammed by the European Union who said the mass sentencing is “in violation of Egypt’s international human rights obligations”.

Since the army deposed Morsi on July 3, 2013, at least 1,400 people have been killed in a police crackdown on protests, mostly Islamists supporting the ousted leader.

Hundreds of his supporters have been sentenced to death in swift mass trials which the United Nations says were “unprecedented in recent history”.

In a statement after Monday’s verdict Amnesty International said the court’s decision was “outrageous” and “an example of the bias of the Egyptian criminal justice system”.

“Issuing mass death sentences whenever the case involves the killing of police officers now appears to be near-routine policy, regardless of facts and with no attempt to establish individual responsibility,” said Amnesty’s Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui.

Rights groups and critics of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the former army chief who ousted Morsi, say authorities are using the judiciary as an arm to repress any form of dissent, including from secular activists.

Morsi and several top leaders of his black-listed Muslim Brotherhood are in custody and facing several trials on charges punishable by death.

Egypt’s first freely elected president is already facing three trials and the fourth will open on February 15 for allegedly leaking “classified documents” to Qatar and the Doha-based Al-Jazeera network.

Last week an Egyptian court set May 16 for a verdict in another espionage case in which Morsi and 35 others are accused of allegedly conspiring with foreign powers, including Iran, to destabilise Egypt.

Separately, another court is to deliver a verdict on April 21 in the trial of Morsi and 14 others for inciting the killing of protesters in clashes outside the presidential palace in December 2012.

He is also on trial over a jailbreak and attacks on police stations during the 2011 uprising that ousted president Hosni Mubarak.