Egypt has its boot on the Brotherhood’s neck, and it doesn’t seem to be coming off anytime soon.

CAIRO (Reuters) – Three leaders of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood go on trial in Cairo on Sunday on charges of inciting lethal violence during unrest that preceded the army’s overthrow of President Mohamed Morsi.

Mohamed Badie, the Islamist movement’s “General Guide”, and his two deputies, Khairat al-Shater and Rashad Bayoumy, will not attend the High Court session, the state news agency MENA said.

The trial signals the determination of Egypt’s new army-backed rulers to crush an organization they have portrayed as a violent, terrorist group bent on undermining the state.

The Brotherhood, which won five successive votes after the fall of former President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, says it is a peaceful movement unjustly targeted by the generals who ousted Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected leader, on July 3.

The military contends it was responding to the people’s will, citing vast demonstrations at the time against the rule of a man criticized for accumulating excessive power, pushing a partisan Islamist agenda and mismanaging the economy.

Morsi has been in detention in an undisclosed location since army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi deposed him.

Charges against Badie and his aides include incitement to violence and relate to an anti-Brotherhood protest outside the group’s Cairo headquarters on July 30 in which nine people were killed and 91 wounded. The 70-year-old Brotherhood leader was detained last week. Shater and Bayoumy were picked up earlier.