CAIRO: An Egyptian appeals court on Wednesday overturned death sentences of 33 alleged supporters of ousted President Muhammad Mursi and ordered a retrial, state media and their lawyer said.

A lower court in June condemned to death 183 hard-liners, including the 33, for the alleged murder of two policemen and attempted murder of five others in the southern province of Minya on Aug. 14, 2013.

The defendants were found guilty of committing the murders on the same day that police killed hundreds of Mursi backers in Cairo clashes.

The June verdict came after a speedy mass trial and sparked an international outcry, with the United Nations saying such mass verdicts were “unprecedented in recent history.”

On Tuesday, the Court of Cassation overturned the death sentences of the 33 hard-liners and life terms of three others, and ordered their retrial, the official MENA news agency and defense lawyer Mohammed Tosson said.

The 36 defendants were in custody and had appealed against the lower court’s verdict, said Ossama El-Helw, another defense lawyer.

Other codefendants sentenced to death had been tried in absentia as they are on the run, and automatically face a retrial if they surrender.

Among those tried in absentia and sentenced to death last June was Mohamed Badie, who heads Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood movement, although he was in prison at the time of the trial.

Badie will also be retried.

In January, the appeals court ordered a retrial of another group of 152 radicals, including 37 sentenced to death, in a similar case in Minya.