An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced six people, including two al-Jazeera employees, to death for allegedly passing documents related to national security to Qatar and the Doha-based TV network during the rule of former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi.
Morsi and two of his aides were sentenced to 25 years in prison for membership in the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood group but were acquitted of espionage, a capital offense.
Morsi and his secretary, Amin al-Sirafy, each received additional 15-year sentences for leaking official documents.
Al-Sirafy’s daughter, Karima, was also sentenced to 15 years on the same charge.
Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected leader, was ousted by the military in July 2013 and has already been sentenced to death in another case. That death sentence and another two — life and 20 years in prison — are under appeal. The Brotherhood was banned and declared a terrorist organization after his ouster.
Khalid Radwan, a producer at a Brotherhood-linked TV channel, received a 15-year prison sentence. All of Saturday’s verdicts can be appealed. Of the case’s 11 defendants, seven, including Morsi, are in custody.
Amnesty International called for the death sentences to be immediately thrown out and for the “ludicrous charges against the journalists to be dropped.”
The two al-Jazeera employees — identified by the judge as news producer Alaa Omar Mohammed and news editor Ibrahim Mohammed Hilal — were sentenced to death in absentia along with Asmaa al-Khateib, who worked for Rasd, a media network widely suspected of links to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Al-Jazeera condemned the verdicts, saying they were part of a “ruthless” campaign against freedom of expression, and called on the international community to show solidarity with the journalists.
“This sentence is only one of many politicized sentences that target al-Jazeera and its employees,” the network’s acting director Mostefa Souag said in a statement. “They are illogical convictions and legally baseless. Al Jazeera strongly denounces targeting its journalists and stands by the other journalists who have also been sentenced.”
A news story that appeared earlier on the al-Jazeera English Web site identified Hilal as a former director of news at al-Jazeera’s Arabic channel and said Alaa Omar Mohamed was an al-Jazeera employee until last year.
The network’s statement confirmed Hilal’s status, but only said that Mohamed was “identified by the prosecution as an al-Jazeera journalist.”
The three other defendants sentenced to death on Saturday are documentary producer Ahmed Afify, EgyptAir cabin crew member Mohammed Keilany and academic Ahmed Ismail.
Judge Mohammed Shirin Fahmy recommended the death sentence for the six last month.
Under standard procedure in cases of capital punishment, his recommendation went to the office of Egypt’s grand mufti, the nation’s top Muslim theological authority, for endorsement.
Fahmy quoted the Mufti’s office as saying the six had sought to harm the country when they passed to a foreign nation details of the army’s deployment as well as reports prepared by intelligence agencies.
“They are more dangerous than spies, because spies are usually foreigners, but these are, regrettably, Egyptians who betrayed the trust,” the judge said. “No ideology can ever justify the betrayal of one’s country.”
Egypt’s relations with Qatar have been fraught with tension since the ouster of Morsi, who enjoyed the support of the tiny but wealthy Gulf state. Cairo also maintains that al-Jazeera’s news coverage of Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East is biased in favor of militant Muslim groups.
Last year, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi pardoned two imprisoned journalists from the al-Jazeera English news network. Mohamed Fahmy, an Egyptian-born Canadian, and Egyptian Baher Mohamed were arrested in December 2013.
They had been sentenced to three years in prison for airing what a court described as “false news” and coverage biased in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not