Story highlights Attorney: Kafr El-Sheikh case shows how Egypt's judicial system "has become a joke"

Convictions based on confessions made while under torture, families claim

(CNN) The number of civilians sentenced to death in Egypt's military courts leapt from 60 in 2016 to at least 112 in 2017, according to two independent rights groups.

Human rights advocates say the alarming numbers recorded by the Egyptian Coordination for Rights & Freedoms and the Initiative for Personal Rights are shocking -- but the stories behind them are even more harrowing.

What happened to four families from the northern city of Kafr el-Sheikh is a case in point. After more than a year of campaigning to have their loved ones' death sentences commuted in a case clouded by allegations of flaws in Egypt's judicial system, they received phone calls on Monday directing them to collect their relatives' bodies early Tuesday.

The families of Lotfy Khalil, Sameh Abdalla, Ahmed Abdelhadi and Ahmed Salama told CNN they received the calls from a police officer at an Alexandria prison.

The four defendants were accused of killing three military cadets in a bomb attack on a bus in Kafr El-Sheikh on April 15, 2015. Their subsequent trial and appeals became known in the media as the Kafr el-Sheikh case. Because the attack happened on a main street, the case came under military jurisdiction due to a recent presidential decree granting Egypt's military the authority for policing public places and land up to 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) from public roads.

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