Deceased and imprisoned Palestinians accused of helping Morsi escape from prison

The Cairo Criminal Court has accused more than 100 people of helping ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi escape from prison in 2011 during the January revolution.

Several Palestinians from the Gaza Strip are among the accused, including some who were killed and others imprisoned by the Israeli occupation several years before the prison break.

About 15 years before the Egyptian revolution, Hassan Salameh from Khan Younis city in central Gaza was imprisoned by the Palestinian Authority and handed over to the Israeli occupation. Salameh received 48 life sentences from an Israeli military court. Since then he has spent about 14 years in solitary confinement.

Another Palestinian, who was killed by the Israeli occupation years before the Egyptian revolution, was also listed among the suspected culprits.

The firefighter Hussam Al-Sane’ was at his office for the security services in Gaza when the Israeli occupation forces attacked the first day of the 2008/2009 war against Gaza. He died immediately.

Former Palestinian prisoner Tayseer Abu-Sneema from Rafah, who took part in planning and kidnapping the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, probably knew that the Israeli occupation army would blacklist him as a result of his resistance activities. He was assassinated April 2011.

But what Abu-Sneema did not know before he died is that he would one day be chased by the Egyptian judiciary for taking part in a fake plot to help Morsi escape from prison.

Abu-Sneema never travelled outside the Gaza Strip nor even held a passport.

Observers have ridiculed the court for trusting such absurd claims in the hyper-politicised case against Morsi.

Meanwhile, Egyptian newspapers are celebrating obtaining what they have called “confidential” information from secret sources about the names of those Palestinians who are planning future attacks against Egypt.

Among the names is the former senior leader of Al-Qassam Brigades, Ahmed Al-Jabari, whose assassination triggered the Israeli war against Gaza in 2012.