MORSI SENTENCED TO DEATH
EX-EGYPT PREZ CONVICTED IN JAILBREAK CASE
CAIRO: An Eg yptian cour t 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.
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 their driver, who were 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, AbdelFattah el-Sissi, was the military chief at the time and led the ouster. El-Sissi ran for president last year and won in a landslide.
Also sentenced to death with Morsi in the prison break case were 105 defendants, most tried and convicted in absentia. They include some 70 Palestinians. Those tried in absentia in Egypt receive automatic retrials once they are detained.
Supporters of Morsi and his now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood chanted “down, down with military rule” as elShami announced the verdict in the courtroom, a converted lecture hall in the national police academy in an eastern Cairo suburb.
Those sentenced to death with Morsi on Saturday include the Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, Mohammed Badie, as well as one of the Arab world’s best known Islamic scholars, the Qatar-based Youssef al-Qaradawi.
In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the sentencing to death of some 70 Palestinians in the prison break case was “regrettable” and “shocking”.