THOUGH it presented no evidence, the Egyptian government wasted little time in blaming the Muslim Brotherhood for the car bomb that killed Hisham Bara-kat, the prosecutor general, in June 2015. Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt's president, naturally concurred-he had, after all, booted the Brotherhood from power-but he also had harsh words for the judicial system. "The arm of justice is being chained by the law," said Mr Sisi at the time. He did not mean this as a compliment. Long appeals delay executions, he grumbled. (Much of the Brotherhood's leadership sits on death row.) As the president left Mr Barakat's funeral, he dressed down a crowd of judges, saying: "No courts should work this way."
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