CAIRO, May 13 (Aswat Masriya) - Egypt's Court of Cassation accepted a policeman's challenge of a prison sentence handed to him for killing a suspect in 2011, ordering his retrial on Wednesday.

The policeman Omar al-Keneesy is from the National Security branch of the police and is one of several policemen who faced trial for the killing of Sayed Bilal, whose death is seen as one of the sparks of the January 2011 uprising which saw the end of former president Hosni Mubarak's 30 year rule. 

Of the five policemen brought to trial, four were sentenced in absentia to life in prison in June 2012, including Keneesy. 

Egyptian law allows for a person sentenced in absentia to ask for a retrial. If the request is accepted, the trial procedures are restarted.

Keneesy turned himself in in March 2013. He was retried and handed a 15 year prison sentence in April 2013.

Keneesy is the second of the policemen tried in absentia to hand himself in. The first policeman to do so was eventually acquitted. 

Bilal was arrested on January 5, 2011, alongside several other Salafis, who are more conservative followers of Sunni Islam. They were arrested for an investigation into a blast that had occurred a on New Year's eve at a church in Alexandria, killing over 20 people.

According to a later investigation on what happened to Bilal, he was "tortured" inside the headquarters of State Security branch of the police, whose name was later changed to National Security after the 2011 uprising.  

The torture was carried out at the hands of "State Security policemen" and it continued until Bilal "took his final breath immediately after being moved to a medical centre."