Egypt's Morsi, 100 others sentenced to death

Cairo

An Egyptian court yesterday sentenced deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi and more than 100 other people 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.

Morsi, sitting in a caged dock in the blue uniform of convicts after 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.

Morsi, 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. He was among dozens of Islamist leaders detained amid a crackdown that left hundreds of Morsi supporters dead.

Many of those sentenced yesterday were tried in absentia, including prominent Qatar-based Islamic cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

The court will pronounce its final decision on June 2, since under Egyptian law, death sentences are referred to the mufti, the government's interpreter of Islamic law, who plays an advisory role. Defendants can still appeal even after the mufti's recommendation.

Morsi, 63, has yet to be sentenced in the first of two trials that concluded on Saturday, in which the death penalty was given to 16 other defendants convicted of espionage.They were all found guilty of colluding with foreign powers, the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and Iran to destabilise Egypt.