Egypt prosecutors demand death penalty for Morsi

Egypt prosecutors demand death penalty for Morsi
Thu Nov 20, 2014 07:38:51

Egyptian prosecutors have officially asked the Cairo Criminal Court to sentence the country’s ousted president, Mohamed Morsi, and other Muslim Brotherhood leaders to death

Prosecutor Emad el-Sharawy said on Wednesday that Morsi and his aides must be handed down the death penalty on espionage charges.

Morsi and 35 Muslim Brotherhood leaders are standing trial for what the military-backed court calls destabilization of Egypt through collaborating with such groups as Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah and leaking confidential information to foreign countries.

The court’s final session is set to be held on November 26 to hear Morsi’s closing defense remarks.

Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically-elected president, was ousted in July 2013 in a military coup led by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the country’s current president and the then army commander.

Sisi is accused of leading the suppression of Muslim Brotherhood supporters as hundreds of them have been killed in clashes with Egyptian security forces over the last year.

Rights groups say the army’s crackdown on the supporters of Morsi has left over 1,400 people dead and 22,000 arrested, while some 200 people have been sentenced to death in mass trials.

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