CAIRO: Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Mursi was sentenced to 20 years in prison without parole yesterday on charges arising from the killing of protesters, nearly three years after he became Egypt’s first freely elected president.
Mursi stood in a cage in court as judge Ahmed Sabry Youssef read out the ruling against him and 12 other Brotherhood members, including senior figures Mohamed El Beltagy and Essam El Erian. The sentencing was broadcast live on state television.
The men were convicted on charges of violence, kidnapping and torture stemming from the killing of protesters during demonstrations in 2012. They were acquitted of murder charges, which carry the death sentence.
A lawyer for some of the defendants said they would appeal.
The United States expressed “concern” about the verdict but did not indicate that it would affect diplomatic relations with Egypt, a strategic US ally in the Middle East.
“Mr Mursi, like all other defendants, must be afforded the basic legal right of due process. And the United States continues to be strongly opposed to politicized arrests and detentions,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.
Amnesty International described the ruling as “a travesty of justice” that “shatters any remaining illusion of independence and impartiality in Egypt’s criminal justice system”.
The London-based human rights group called for Mursi to be retried in a civilian court “in line with international standards” or released.
Leading Egyptian cleric Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, who lives in pro-Brotherhood Qatar, criticised the ruling.
“The judiciary in Egypt is no longer one of the three (branches of) power. Instead, all the powers and the country itself are now run by the military,” he said in a statement.
Egypt’s US-backed government says the judiciary is independent and it never intervenes in its work.
Displaying a four-finger salute symbolising resistance to the state’s crackdown on Islamists, defendants in a makeshift courtroom on the outskirts of Cairo chanted “God is Greatest” after the verdict was read.
The ruling is the first against Mursi, who says he is determined to reverse what he calls a military coup against him in 2013 staged by then-army chief, now president, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi.
Amr Darrag, a Mursi-era minister, said the Brotherhood would remain a powerful force, with younger members taking up leadership roles made vacant by the state’s crackdown.
“The overall attitude of the Brotherhood (is) more revolutionary because the generation taking it over is young and more revolutionary and they saw what kind of an Egypt we’d have if they don’t do what they have to do,” he told Reuters in an interview in Istanbul.
Mursi’s son, Osama, said his father plans a comeback despite the jail sentence.
The state news agency MENA quoted a security source saying Mursi was taken by helicopter back to Borg Al Arab prison near Alexandria, where he has been held for more than a year.
Mursi faces charges in four other cases including leaking secrets to Qatar, conspiring with the Palestinian militant group Hamas to destabilise Egypt, and organising a jailbreak during the 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak.
Yesterday’s verdict did not appear to trigger significant protests, another sign of the Brotherhood’s waning influence.
REUTERS
