Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Morsi gets death sentence
CAIRO — An Egyptian court Saturday sentenced the country’s first freely elected leader, ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, to death over a mass prison break during the 2011 uprising that eventually took him to power.
The ruling applies to another 105 people, and is the latest in a series of mass death sentences handed down since the military overthrew Morsi nearly two years ago.
Hours after the verdict was issued, three Egyptian judges were killed by gunmen while riding a bus in the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt has been shaken by an upsurge in attacks by insurgents in Sinai since Morsi was deposed by the military in 2013. It was not immediately clear whether Saturday’s attack was connected to the verdict against Morsi.
Egypt’s judiciary has come under mounting international criticism since Morsi’s ouster as it has handed down harsh mass sentences to Islamists and jailed secular activists for protesting. At the same time, the courts have acquitted or handed light sentences to top officials who served under President Hosni Mubarak, whose nearly 30-year reign was ended by the 2011 Arab Spring-inspired uprising.
“These sentences are yet another manifestation of the deeply troubling way the Egyptian judiciary has been used as a tool to settle political disagreements,” Emad Shahin, a professor at the American University in Cairo who was sentenced to death in absentia, wrote in a Facebook post.
“Due process, regard for evidence, and minimum standards of justice have been tossed aside in favor of draconian injustice,” wrote Shahin, now a visiting professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
As is customary in capital-punishment cases, Judge Shaaban el-Shami referred his death sentences on Morsi and the others to the nation’s top Sunni Muslim religious authority, the grand mufti, for his nonbinding opinion. El-Shami set June 2 for the next hearing, and the sentences can be appealed.
Morsi already is serving a 20-year sentence for his part in the 2012 deaths of protesters outside a Cairo presidential palace.
The military overthrew Morsi in July 2013 after days of mass protests by Egyptians angered by policies perceived as divisive. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who had been appointed military chief by Morsi, led his ouster, and was elected nearly a year ago in a vote boycotted by the Islamist opposition.
Since his ouster, authorities have cracked down on Islamists and pro- democracy activists who were instrumental in the 2011 uprising. Thousands of Morsi supporters have been jailed and hundreds killed in street clashes over the past two years, including at least 600 in one day, when security forces violently dispersed two pro-Morsi sit-ins in August 2013.
After the verdict was read Saturday, a smiling Morsi, wearing a blue prison uniform and standing inside a metal and glass cage built in the courtroom, defiantly waved the four-finger sign associated with the sit-ins.
In a separate case, the judge also sentenced 16 people to death in an espionage case in which Morsi and other Muslim Brotherhood leaders were accused of conspiring with foreign armed groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah, to destabilize Egypt. Morsi was not among those condemned to death in that case.
A verdict on Morsi’s role will be announced in the June 2 hearing.