Egypt's Morsi Bags 20 Years Jail Term

An Egyptian court sentenced former President Mohamed Morsi to 20 years in prison Tuesday in connection with the killing of protesters in 2012.

He escaped a possible death penalty with the court ruling that he and 12 other Muslim Brotherhood leaders and supporters were guilty of intimidation and violence, but not murder.

The charges are related to clashes outside the presidential palace that started with Morsi’s Islamist supporters attacking protesters who were rallying against a decree declaring his decisions could not be challenged by the courts.

Morsi, the country’s first democratically elected president, came to power nearly four years ago promising a brighter future for Egypt after the popular uprising that ended the longtime rule of Hosni Mubarak.

But his policies brought on massive protests that led then-military chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to oust him.

A military-led transition that ended with Sissi himself becoming president also included a crackdown on Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood.

The group was once banned under Mubarak, and after a resurgence under Morsi’s rule, was declared a terrorist organization under the current government with most of its leaders arrested.

The Brotherhood has continued to insist that Morsi is Egypt’s legitimate leader and that Sissi led a coup against him.

The group issued a statement ahead of Tuesday’s verdict saying the president is “exploiting the judiciary as a weapon against popular will.” It also called on Egyptians to launch new protests.

While awaiting the verdict, Osama Morsi told Reuters news service that his father is “a man with a mission. The mission is the path of democracy that we gained in the 25 January revolution.

“We will get it back. President Morsi knows this well,” Osama Morsi continued, speaking about his father. “… Do not worry about Mohamed Morsi’s spirit.”

Morsi can appeal the verdict.

Osama Morsi, 31, is part of his father’s defense team. He told Reuters in a phone interview Monday that the elder Morsi  “is quite well, physically and spiritually.”

He told Reuters he’d met with his father at least seven times since the elder man’s detention, with all the meetings in a small, heavily guarded room off the court. No one in Morsi’s family, including his other four children, has been allowed to visit him in prison, where he’s kept in isolation.

Amnesty International described the ruling as “a travesty of justice” that “shatters any remaining illusion of independence and impartiality in Egypt’s criminal justice system,” reports Reuters.

The rights group called for Morsi to be retried in a civilian court “in line with international standards” or  released.

Samer Shehata, a University of Oklahoma associate professor of Middle East studies, told VOA ahead of the verdict that Egypt’s courts are not free and that the system has been a “mockery of justice.”

“Sometimes the defense has not been allowed to actually question witnesses or present evidence, and so this is not a fair, legitimate, thorough, due process system,” Shehata said. “This is, as I said, a politicized court system against the Muslim Brotherhood and against really almost all dissent in Egypt.”

He also said there is “very little evidence, if any,” to support a separate case involving charges of espionage against Morsi.

“The allegation or the claim is that Mr. Morsi’s allegiances were not really with Egypt, but were with these foreign powers – Qatar for example, or Turkey or Hamas, the Palestinians – and he’s accused of passing on sensitive information to the Qataris or willing to provide the Palestinians with some land in Sinai against Egyptian national interests,” Shehata said. “All of these things are fabrications, figments of the imagination.”