CAIRO, Feb 5 (Aswat Masriya) - Seventeen rights groups criticised on Thursday the mass sentencing of 230 defendants, including political activist Ahmed Douma, to life in prison in the "cabinet clashes" trial on Wednesday.

The rights groups urged the intervention of the Supreme Judicial Council to stop what they described as the "continuous collapse of the [Egyptian] justice system". They also called upon the council to refrain from the political conflict and commit to serving justice.

Clashes broke out between protesters and security forces outside the cabinet headquarters in December 2011, leaving at least three people dead and 255 wounded. Egypt's Scientific Complex, located near the cabinet headquarters, was torched during the clashes.

The defendants were charged with illegal assembly, possession of bladed weapons and Molotov cocktails, assaulting army and police personnel and attacking governmental institutions in December 2011 during the "cabinet clashes".  

This trial stands as proof of the "selectivity of justice," the groups said in a statement. While these protesters were served mass sentences, none of the military and police personnel who dispersed the protest and killed around 17 protesters was held accountable, they added.

This is not the first precedent of mass sentences, the statement read, referencing Monday's court ratification of death sentences served to 183 defendants accused of killing policemen in Giza's Kerdasa neighbourhood in 2013, after consulting Egypt's Grand Mufti.

These sentences "brew political violence and revenge," the statement warned. It added that terrorist groups are the sole beneficiary of these verdicts.

Both the United States and the European Union condemned the sentences on Wednesday. The U.S. State Department spokeswoman said its government was "deeply troubled" by the verdict, while the EU said the sentences violate Egypt's international human rights obligations, a statement by the spokesperson in Brussels read.

The cabinet clashes trial has "witnessed a number of legal violations" against the defendants by the court's bench, beginning with the presiding judge's declaration of his personal "hostility" against the defendants, the statement read. 

The judge presiding over the trial, Mohamed Nagi Shehata, said the court based its verdict on witnesses' testimonies, as well as a recorded video for Douma which was broadcast on a television talk show. 

During the talk show on private television channel Dream, Douma had said he threw Molotov cocktails at "a group [of people] in army uniform", adding that he was responding to their attacks. 

The same court had sentenced Douma to three years in prison and a 10-thousand Egyptian-pound fine during an earlier trial session in December 2014 for insulting court.