Brotherhood spritual guide sentenced to death - gulfnews.com

Cairo- An Egyptian court Monday sentenced to death 683 supporters of the ousted Islamist president Mohammad Mursi, the second such ruling issued in one month in a mass trial in the country.

The convicts include head of the Muslim Brotherhood Mohammad Badie, who is being tried in more than other 30 cases on multiple charges.

The Criminal Court in Minya found the defendants, the majority of them were tried in absentia, guilty of inciting and involvement in rioting that erupted in the southern city in the wake of a deadly security clampdown on pro-Mursi vigils in mid-August last year. A police station was torched and a policeman was killed in the Minya unrest at the time.

The verdict will now be sent to the Grand Mufti, Egypt’s chief Islamic authority, for approval or rejection. The court has set June 21 for announcing the final ruling.

Badie, a veterinary professor, is the second spiritual leader of the Brotherhood to be sentenced to death. In 1954, the Brotherhood supreme guide Hassan Al Hudeibi was given a death sentence over alleged involvement in a bid on life of the then Egyptian president Jamal Abdul Nasser. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.

In a separate case, the Minya Criminal Court Monday sentenced 37 Mursi supporters to death and 492 others to life imprisonment on charges of attacking a police station and killing a senior security official in the city last year. The rulings changed mass death sentences passed by the court in the same case last month. At the time, the United Nations condemned the verdict as breaching international law and being ‘rife with procedural irregularities’.

Media crews were barred from attending Monday’s sessions in which the verdicts were pronounced by chief judge Saeed Yousuf.

Dozens of the defendants’ relatives, gathering outside the court building, reacted with shrieks and crying upon learning about the latest rulings. Security forces cordoned off the area and prevented the distraught protesters from coming near the courthouse in central Minya, 240 kilometres south of Cairo.

Security measures were, meanwhile, maximized nationwide for fear of a violent backlash from Mursi’s loyalists.

Mursi’s Brotherhood denounced the verdicts, saying they ‘exposed the fallacy of judicial independence’ in Egypt.

The military-backed government has repeatedly said courts are independent state authorities do not interfere in verdicts.

Mohammad al-Damati, a Brotherhood-affiliated lawyer, said that a defence team will appeal against the latest rulings.

‘A large number of the accused were tried in absentia. Once they turn themselves in or are arrested, the law stipulates a new trial for them,’ he said. ‘The prosecution is also obliged under the law to file an appeal against the rulings to the Court of Cassation,’ he added, referring to Egypt’s top appeals court.

Thousands of the Brotherhood’s leaders and followers have been detained allegedly for inciting or involvement in violence since Mursi’s overthrow. The clampdown is the toughest against the 86-year-old Islamist group.

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