Former Egyptian President and Muslim Brotherhood Leader Mohammed Morsi Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison for Unlawfu Arrests, Torture of Protesters
Former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, who was also a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood, has been sentenced on Tuesday to 20 years in prison for unlawful arrests and torture carried out during his time in power.
Morsi served as his country's first freely elected president between June 2012 and July 2013, before he was forcefully removed from power following heavy nationwide protests. He was chairman of the Freedom and Justice Party, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood — an organization which has since been declared illegal and forced to go underground.
BBC News reported that this was the first verdict Morsi has received since his outing, and is one of several trials that he faces.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Morsi's other trials include colluding with foreign militants to free Islamists in mass prison breaks during the 2011 uprising; espionage and conspiring to commit terrorist acts with the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah; as well as endangering national security by leaking state secrets to Qatar.
The former president could have even received the death penalty, along with 14 other Brotherhood members, but he was cleared of the more serious charge of inciting the killing of protesters.
Morsi's supporters heavily targeted Christians following the change of power in 2013, blaming the minority faith group for taking part in the protests. Christians were attacked in various cities across Egypt, while churches, Christian bookstores and orphanages were vandalized.
Retired Field Marshall Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who won the presidential elections in 2014, was hailed by Christians for protecting them from Islamic extremisim.
"Many Christians, and even Muslims, think that Sisi saved them from the Islamic groups and he is the hero and savior that we are all waiting for. In Egypt you have to choose from two choices: Military or Islamist. So, if I am Christian, for sure I'll choose the military even if I don't like them," Mahmoud Farouk, executive director of the Egyptian Center for Public Policy Studies, said at the time.
Father Youannis Shawky, a priest from Minya province, added that Christians battled hard to see Morsi and the Brotherhood lose their power.
"The Christian paid a precious price to remove the Muslim Brotherhood. Their properties were looted, destroyed and burned. Many churches were burned, destroyed and demolished," Shawky said.
Egyptian authorities under Sisi's rule have arrested thousands of Brotherhood supporters in the past year. On Monday, another 22 Brotherhood members were sentenced to death for a separate attack on a police station in Cairo.
U.S. President Barack Obama, who initially backed Morsi when the latter won the 2012 election, critisized the initial uprising against the Muslim Brotherhood leader, but stopped short of calling his downfall a coup.
Reuters reported that the Muslim Brotherhood leadership is strongly opposed to Morsi's sentence, and has claimed that the Egyptian court did not have the sufficient evidence to convict him.
"His trial has been a travesty of justice, which has been scripted and controlled by the government and entirely unsupported by evidence," said Amr Darrag, a senior figure from the Muslim Brotherhood and a former minister under Morsi. "They want to pass a life sentence for democracy in Egypt."
Morsi's defense team is expected to appeal against Tuesday's verdict. The former president is reportedly being held in a maximum-security prison in Alexandria.
