CAIRO: An Egyptian court acquitted six police officers Saturday on charges of killing 83 protesters during the country’s 2011 revolution, the latest in a string of trials that rights group say failed to hold the country’s security forces accountable for demonstrators’ deaths.

The police officers’ case involved the killing of protesters in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and included the former head of security and of the riot police. Prosecutors alleged that commanders armed police with live ammunition and allowed officers to shoot at protesters in front of police stations from nearby rooftops.

Lawyers for the officers denied that they were responsible for the killings. During a Jan. 19 hearing, lawyers referred to Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood group as the “real killers” of the protesters, the state-run daily newspaper Al-Ahram reported.

Given the chaos surrounding the uprising, legal experts say it is difficult to hold any individual legally responsible for a specific killing. However, not one of the police officers charged with killing protesters in 2011 are behind bars, leading rights groups to accuse Egypt’s judiciary of protecting security forces at the expense of justice.

“The consecutive regimes did not have the political will to hold the criminals accountable, allowing them to go away with it,” said rights lawyer Ahmed Ezzat, who works with the prominent Freedom of Though and Expression group. “These acquittals strengthen (Mubarak’s) position. ... Now we have the interim authorities putting it all again on Mursi.”

“Policemen who are acquitted come out of detention fiercer,” Ezzat said. “They will kill more protesters.”

Meanwhile, deposed President Muhammad Mursi on Saturday rejected the right of a court to try him and other Muslim Brotherhood leaders on charges related to a mass jail break in 2011, security and judicial sources said.

Mursi and his comrades, including the Brotherhood’s top leader Mohamed Badie, are charged with killing and kidnapping policemen, attacking police facilities and breaking out of jail during the 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak.

“As far as I’m concerned, these procedures are void and I don’t accept them,” Mursi said, describing himself as the president of the republic and calling on the Egyptian people to continue their “peaceful revolution,” according to the sources.

Some of the other roughly 130 defendants, who were held in a different courtroom cage from Mursi, applauded him and chanted “Down with military rule.” It is not unusual for high-profile defendants to be locked up in cages in Egyptian courts.