Cairo: Egypt’s deposed president Mohammad Mursi was on Tuesday sentenced to 20 years in prison over protester deaths, in the first verdict issued against the Islamist leader since his ouster in 2013.
Mursi is being tried in other cases. If convicted, he could face possible death penalty.
The Cairo Criminal Court on Tuesday also sentenced 12 other defendants in the same case to 20 years in prison.
Mursi and co-accused were convicted of show of force, the illegal detention of opponents and torturing them.
The court also gave two more defendants 10 years in prison. The verdicts can be appealed.
Chief Judge of the court, Ahmad Yousuf, acquitted all the defendants, including six fugitives, of charges of premeditated murder and the illegal possession of weapons.
The court ordered all the defendants be placed in high-security prisons and be subjected to five-year police supervision each after serving their jail terms.
The case is related to fatal violence that erupted outside the Ittahdiya presidential palace in Cairo in December 2012 when Mursi was in power. At the time, anti-Islamist opponents gathered outside the palace in Cairo to protest a decree issued by Mursi expanding his powers beyond judicial oversight.
Mursi’s loyalists attacked the protesters, triggering clashes that resulted in 10 deaths. Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood said that eight of the dead were among its members.
Mursi was deposed by the army in July 2013 following enormous street protests against his year-long rule.
On May 16, verdicts are due in two cases involving Mursi on charges of spying for foreign agencies and an escape from prison during the 2011 uprising that forced Mursi’s predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, out of power. The charges carry possible death sentences.
During Tuesday’s session, aired live on state television, the defendants, including Mursi, were placed inside a sound-proof glass cage at a makeshift courtroom in the Police Academy on the outskirts of Cairo. Mursi, 63, was later taken by a helicopter to a high-security prison in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria where he was to put on a blue uniform, a mandatory outfit for convicted prisoners in Egypt, according to security officials.
The convicts include senior Brotherhood leaders mainly Mohammad Al Beltagy and Essam Al Erian.
The Brotherhood, now designated a terrorist organisation in Egypt, has called the trial a “farce”. The group has called for a “revolution” across the country in protest against the verdicts. Mursi’s son, Osama, dismissed the ruling as invalid. “It’s a politically motivated verdict,” he tweeted.
Mursi’s lawyer, Al Sayyed Hamed, said he would appeal the ruling.
“The verdict is still balanced in view of the latest rulings in other trials, “he added, referring to a series of heavy-handed verdicts passed against Mursi’s backers in recent months.
Hamed was appointed to defend Mursi in the case, dubbed in the media as the “Ittihadiya events”, after the toppled president refused to recognise the authority of the court, insisting he is still the president of Egypt.
Outside the court building, hundreds of security forces were deployed in anticipation of violence from Mursi’s backers and opponents. But very few civilians appeared in the place.
The Brotherhood has been the target of a tough security crackdown since Mursi’s removal.
Thousands of the group’s followers have since been arrested and put on trial allegedly for inciting or participating in violence.
With Tuesday’s verdict, Mursi becomes the second president to be convicted in modern Egypt.
In 2012, another court sentenced Mubarak to life imprisonment over involvement in the killing of protesters in the revolt against his regime. On appeal, the verdict was overturned and a retrial was ordered for Mubarak. Last November, the murder charges against him were dropped.
