An Egyptian court yesterday sentenced former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi and more than 100 other defendants to death over jailbreaks during the 2011 uprising.
Morsi, sitting in a caged dock in the blue uniform of convicts having already been sentenced to 20 years for inciting violence, raised his fists in defiance when the judge read out his verdict.
Among the others sentenced to death were Mohamed Badei, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who had already been handed the death penalty in another trial, and his deputy Khairat al-Shater.
Photo: AFP
The nation’s first freely elected president was ousted by then-Egyptian army field marshal and now Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi in July 2013 following mass street protests demanding his resignation after just a year in power.
His overthrow triggered a government crackdown on his Muslim Brotherhood movement in which hundreds of people have died and thousands been imprisoned.
Under Egyptian law, death sentences are passed on to the mufti, the government’s interpreter of Islamic law, who plays an advisory role. The defendants can appeal even after the mufti’s recommendation.
The court is expected to pronounce its final decision on June 2.
Rights groups accuse al-Sisi’s regime — widely backed by Egyptians tired of years of political turmoil — of using the judiciary as a tool to repress opposition.
Morsi was last month sentenced to 20 years in prison after being convicted of inciting violence against protesters in 2012 when he was president, in a verdict that Amnesty International denounced as a “travesty of justice.”
Yesterday, a judge was to issue verdicts in two other trials on charges that could mean the death penalty.
An initial death penalty verdict in a mass trial is usually confirmed at a later hearing after receiving the approval of the mufti.
In yesterday’s first case, Morsi and 130 others, including dozens of members of the Palestinian Hamas movement and Lebanon’s Shiite Hezbollah group, were accused of escaping from prisons and attacking police during the 2011 uprising against former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
Including Morsi, 27 defendants are in custody. The rest, including prominent Qatar-based cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, were tried in absentia.
About 850 people were killed during the anti-Mubarak uprising, as protesters rallied primarily against decades of alleged police abuses.
Four years after that revolt, the Muslim Brotherhood has been blamed for most of the unrest in Egypt.
Al-Sisi has vowed to eradicate the organization, an 87-year-old movement that topped successive polls between Mubarak’s fall and Morsi’s presidential election victory in May 2012.
Egyptian authorities designated it a terrorist group in December 2013, making even verbal expressions of support punishable by stiff jail terms.
In yesterday’s second case, Morsi and 35 codefendants, including Brotherhood leaders, were accused of conspiring with foreign powers, Hamas and Shiite Iran to destabilize Egypt.
They are accused of providing Iran’s Revolutionary Guards with security reports to destabilize Egypt.
Prosecutors said that the defendants carried out espionage activity on behalf of the international Muslim Brotherhood organization and Hamas from 2005 to August 2013, “with the aim of perpetrating terror attacks in the nation to spread chaos and topple the [Egyptian] state.”
During Morsi’s presidency, ties flourished between Cairo and Hamas, the Palestinian affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood which controls neighboring Gaza.
However, Egypt’s new authorities accuse Hamas of helping extremists carry out attacks inside the country.
In addition to yesterday’s verdicts, Morsi faces two other trials — on charges of insulting the judiciary, and of spying for Qatar, a key backer of the Muslim Brotherhood.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in