Morsi gets death penalty

An Egyptian court yesterday sentenced deposed Islamist president Mohamed Morsi and more than 100 others to death for their role in a mass jailbreak during the 2011 uprising.

Hours after the ruling, gunmen shot dead three judges in the strife-torn Sinai Peninsula.

Morsi, sitting in a caged dock in the blue uniform of convicts having already been sentenced to 20 years for inciting violence, raised his fists in defiance when the judge read out his verdict.

The judge issued the same sentence to more than 100 other defendants including Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badei, who has also been handed the death penalty in another trial, and his deputy Khairat al-Shater.

Morsi, who rose to the presidency in 2012 as the Brotherhood's compromise candidate after Shater was disqualified, won an election and ruled for only a year before mass protests prompted the military to overthrow him in July 2013.

He and dozens of other Islamist leaders were then detained amid a crackdown that left hundreds of his supporters dead.

Many of those sentenced yesterday were tried in absentia.

Under Egyptian law, death sentences are passed on to the mufti, the government's interpreter of Islamic law, who plays an advisory role. The defendants can appeal even after the mufti's recommendation.

The court will pronounce its final decision on June 2.

"If he (Morsi) decides that we appeal against the verdict, then we will. If he continues to not recognise this court, then we won't appeal," said defence lawyer Abdel Moneim Abdel Maksoud.

Amnesty International lashed out at the verdict, saying it reflected "the deplorable state of the country's criminal justice system".

"The death penalty has become the favourite tool for the Egyptian authorities to purge the political opposition," Said Boumedouha of Amnesty said in a statement from the London-based rights watchdog.

In the Sinai, gunmen yesterday shot dead three judges travelling from Ismailiya to El-Arish for a court hearing, in the first attack targeting the judiciary in the region.