The legal team defending Egypt’s ousted President Mohamed Morsi has accused the prosecution of “fabricating” the first 76 defendants named in the referral order in the “prison break” case. They are alleged to belong to Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, but the defence lawyers say that the list includes people who died years before the incident as well as Palestinians currently imprisoned by the Israelis.
The defence team made its remarks during Morsi’s trial in which he is accused along with 130 others of organising mass prison break-outs during the 25 January 2011 revolution. The Egyptian Cairo Criminal Court adjourned the case to Wednesday, 25 February although Morsi’s lawyers had argued for the case to be put on hold until a verdict is issued on the espionage case involving the former president, or to combine them together since the defendants are being prosecuted for the same incident in both cases.
Morsi’s defence also called for the case to be dismissed in its entirety, arguing that it is built on false investigations. The lawyers noted that the defendants are being held at the Wadi Natrun police station without either a court order or even an arrest warrant.
Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.
