Despite the lawyer boycott, presiding judge Said Youssef went ahead with the session, hearing testimony, in what the lawyers called a violation of the law. After the five-hour hearing, the judge announced that he would issue verdicts in the case at the next session, set for April 28, according to judicial and security officials who attended the sessions and Mohammed Tosson, a defence lawyer who boycotted the session but present in the court building to monitor the results. They include the Muslim Brotherhood's general guide, Mohammed Badie, and the chairman of its Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), Saad al-Katatni. The previous mass trial that Youssef presided over also held only one session to hear testimony before he held a second session Monday to pronounce the verdicts. On Tuesday, the United Nations human rights office called the mass death sentences “unprecedented in recent history” and “a breach of international human rights law.” 
 
 The U.S. State Department said it “defies logic” that so many defendants could have gotten a fair trial in two sessions. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier called the verdicts “very alarming” and said “further mass trials must be suspended.” The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, called on Egyptian officials to ensure “defendants’ rights to a fair and timely trial.” 
 
 Sixteen Egyptian rights groups said they were “extremely concerned” about the court verdict, saying they constitute “a dangerous, unprecedented shift in the Egyptian judiciary’s treatment of such cases and represent a grave violation of both the right to a fair trial and the right to life.” 
 
 The Justice Ministry on Tuesday issued a statement in reaction to the criticism, underlining that the defendants have a right to appeal the verdicts to the Court of Cassation, which can order a retrial. If the retrial reaches a similar verdict, the defendants can appeal to the higher court again, it said. The two trials in Minya are connected to a wave of rioting and mob attacks on police stations by Morsi supporters in August, sparked when security forces stormed two pro-Morsi protest camps in Cairo, killing more than 600 people. “As lawyers, we haven’t seen anything like what happened here yesterday in our entire professional lives and we will not see anything like it until our deaths,” Khaled Fouda, of the Minya lawyers’ syndicate, told a press conference announcing the boycott. A few kilometres away from the court, clashes erupted between security forces firing tear gas and rubber bullets and Islamist students at Minya University who chanted slogans against the verdicts and the military. 'Unprecedented' 
 
 There has been widespread condemnation of Monday's decision by the Minya Criminal Court to sentence 528 people to death for their alleged participation in an attack on a police station in the central city in mid-August, in which a police officer was killed.
– A day after sentencing 529 people to death, Egypt launched another mass trial today, this time accusing 683 Muslim Brotherhood members—including the Brotherhood's top spiritual leader, Mohammed Badie—of crimes including murder and inciting violence in connection with a riot at a police station in Minya. Only 68 defendants were actually in court, the AP reports. Most of the rest are being tried in absentia, though some jailed Brotherhood honchos, including Badie, were kept out of court for security reasons. Also absent: Many defense lawyers, who are boycotting the trial in protest of yesterday's sentencing; the judge who handed out those death sentences is presiding today. By law the lawyers' absence should have halted the trial, but the judge forged ahead. "This judge smashed the rock of justice with his own hands," one said. "He is inventing new law." The 683 are accused of killing two policemen, though according to the BBC no one was actually reported killed in the Minya attack—which followed police raids that killed almost 1,000 protesters in Cairo.