Egypt's Ousted President Morsi Sentenced To Death

November 23, 2024

World - Business

Egypt's Ousted President Morsi Sentenced To Death

May 17, 2015

CAIRO — An Egyptian court sentenced ousted President Mohammed Morsi and over 100 others to death Saturday over a mass prison break during the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak and later brought Morsi's Islamist movement to power, Associated Press reported.

In what appears to be the first violent response to the sentence, suspected Islamic militants in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula gunned down three judges and wounded three others traveling in a car in the northern Sinai city of al-Arish, according to security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

As is customary in capital punishment cases, Judge Shaaban el-Shami referred his death sentence on Morsi and the others to the nation's top Muslim theologian, or mufti, for his non-binding opinion. El-Shami set June 2 for the next hearing. Regardless of the mufti's ruling, the sentences can be appealed.

Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected leader, was ousted by the military in July 2013 following days of mass street protests by Egyptians demanding that he be removed because of his divisive policies. Morsi's successor, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, was the military chief at the time and led the ouster. El-Sissi ran for president last year and won the vote in a landslide.

Also sentenced to death with Morsi in the prison break case were 105 defendants, most of them tried and convicted in absentia. They include some 70 Palestinians. Those tried in absentia in Egypt receive automatic retrials once detained.

Supporters of Morsi and his now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood chanted "down, down with military rule" as el-Shami announced the verdict in the courtroom, a converted lecture hall in the national police academy in an eastern Cairo suburb.