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The world was rocked by shocking news in Egypt this week where 529 members of the Muslim Brotherhood were sentenced to death in a mass trial. The trial took place over two very brief sessions with hundreds of defendants locked up in cages in the courtroom. There were no witnesses called and defense lawyers were not given a chance to present their case.

The men were sentenced for the killing of a single police officer in a town 150 miles outside Cairo days after the attacks on supporters of Mohammad Morsi last August.

Soon after the verdict, Army Field Marshal Abdel Fateh Al-Sisi who helped orchestrate the coup which removed Morsi from the Presidency, resigned as head of the armed forces and declared his desire to run for President.

In the midst of an Egypt which is now seeing mass trials, arrests, curtailed press freedoms and tens of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members imprisoned, Al-Sisi said, “It is true this is my last day in uniform but I will fight every day for Egypt free of fear and terror.” His slogan is for a “modern and democratic Egypt.”

GUESTS: Ashraf Khalil, Independent correspondent based in Cairo, and Author of Liberation Square: Inside the Egyptian Revolution and the Rebirth of a Nation, which is just out in paperback, Noha Radwan, Assistant Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Davis