DOHA: Prominent Islamic cleric, Dr Yusuf Al Qaradawi, pooh-poohed an Egyptian court’s verdict yesterday sentencing him and many others in absentia to death for inciting people to revolt and said it was a worthless ruling that didn’t deserve his attention.
Al Qaradawi was among the more than 100 people, including leaders and supporters of Muslim Brotherhood, who were sentenced to death by an Egyptian court.
Reacting sharply to the court ruling, he told Aljazeera Mubasher (Direct) last evening: “This judgment has no value and can’t be implemented because it is against law, both Islamic and man-made”.
He said he was amused by the verdict as it sentences people to death in wholesale.
“No-one will accept this verdict. It is against people. And who is this judge who has issued the ruling? No-one knows him. How can he sentence 130 people and then send his ruling to a mufti for endorsement? Who is this mufti?” asked Al Qaradawi.
He said he had indeed incited people to rebel but rebel against falsehood and injustice. “It is the right of the people to come out and rebel against injustice and tyranny (of Hosni Mubarak).”
Earlier, after media reports talked of the Egyptian court’s ruling, Al Qaradawi tweeted that he would be speaking to Aljazeera Mubasher at 6.30pm about the ‘drama’.
Still earlier, he posted an Arabic couplet on his Facebook account which suggested that a man was nothing without the values he stood for and that death was a reality that no-one could escape. The Peninsula
Cairo: An Egyptian court yesterday sentenced deposed Islamist president Mohamed Mursi and 106 others to death for their role in a mass jailbreak during the 2011 uprising.
Hours after the ruling, gunmen shot dead two judges, a prosecutor and their driver in the strife-torn Sinai Peninsula, in the first such attack on the judiciary in the region.
Mursi, sitting in a caged dock in the blue uniform of convicts after having already been sentenced to 20 years for inciting violence, raised his fists defiantly when the verdict was read.
Judge Shabaan El Shamy handed down the same sentence to more than 100 other defendants including Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badei, already sentenced to death in another trial, and his deputy Khairat
Al Shater.
Mursi, elected president in 2012 as the Brotherhood’s compromise candidate after Shater was disqualified, ruled for only a year before mass protests spurred the military to overthrow him in July 2013.
Many of those sentenced yesterday were tried in absentia, including prominent Qatar-based Islamic cleric Yusuf Al Qaradawi.
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