On Monday, April 28, an Egyptian court sentenced 683 supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood to death over assaulting and murdering police last year. The defendants, including Brotherhood top leader Mohamed Badie, are accused of inciting violence and murdering policemen deliberately at Al-Adwa town in the Upper Egyptian province of Minya. The files of the defendants will be passed to the country's Mufti, the highest religious authority, to give his Islamic legal opinion on the death sentences, which is not legally binding and could be ignored by the court. Last month, the same court sentenced 529 Brotherhood members and supporters to death and referred their files to the Mufti who confirmed only 37 executions. The court handed down its final capital punishment for the 37 and sentenced the remaining defendants to life in jail.

It is not clear what the top religious authority will deal with the cases of nearly 700 prisoners whose lives countdown has already started. But considering the previous background of the Mufti, it seems that death punishment for visible number of defendants may get rid of legally certain execution.

But even if it happens, the level of capital punishment is astonishingly high. After the collapse of regime of Hosni Mobarak as result of Arab Spring and the subsequent rise of Islamists, many believed that Muslim Brotherhood will rise into an undisputable power in the country. Analyses were based on account that during last decades, international community supported secular-dictatorship in countries like Egypt, fearing the possible rise of Islamist groups. But when the so-called Arab Spring initiated, many countries easily shifted the front and took the side of protestors. And after capture of power by Muslim Brotherhood, some politicians murmured that President Hosni Mobarak should not have been left alone very soon because the successor Islamist group may pave the way for radical Islamists or Jihadi groups.

By the interference of military and toppling of President Morsi, the power calculation unexpectedly changed into reverse direction. Huge number of capital punishment and arrest of top leaders of the MB has constraint the environment even more than President Mobarak.

The strong fist of military has silenced the supporters and its foreign allies—having no hope for revival—also assessing alternative options. If the condition moves on the current path, it does not seem that Muslim Brotherhood breath in relief this soon at the political sphere.