The first democratically elected President of Egypt, President Mohammed Morsi has been sentenced to death by an Egyptian court in connection with a mass jail break in 2011.
Also
sentenced to death by the same court were another 105 members of the Muslim
Brotherhood.
The
defendants were accused of plotting jailbreaks and attacks on police during the
uprising that overthrew the former military dictator, Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
Prior to
this death sentence, President morsi had been sentenced to 20 years
imprisonment on charges linked to the
killing of protesters outside a Cairo presidential palace in 2012.
The cases,
like any capital sentence, will be referred to Egypt's top religious authority,
the Grand Mufti, for his non-binding opinion before any executions can take
place.
Muslim Brotherhood
official Amr Darrag, while talking to Reuters has condemned the ruling saying:
"This
is a political verdict and represents a murder crime that is about to be
committed, and it should be stopped by the international community,”
Human rights
groups have accused Egyptian authorities of widespread abuses in a crackdown on
Brotherhood supporters as well as secular activists, allegations they deny.
