Egypt sentences Muslim Brotherhood leader to life imprisonment

An Egyptian court sentenced the Muslim Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide and 15 other defendants to life imprisonment on Thursday. They were found guilty of engaging in violence in 2013, although Mohamed Badei and the other defendants denied the charges. Life sentences in Egypt generally mean 25 years.

Seventy-seven other defendants were sentenced to 15 years in prison. One of those found guilty by the court actually died last month. Abdel Azim Sharqawi, who died in the final stages of the three-year court case, was still rather bizarrely sentenced in absentia. The sentences can be appealed against within two months of the judgement.

The violence relating to these cases unfolded following the bloody dispersal of the Rabaa Al-Adawiyya protest camp by the Egyptian authorities. Hundreds of protesters were killed during a sit-in against the military coup that ousted President Mohamed Morsi. Egypt’s current president, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, was Egypt’s Defence Minister under Morsi and led the coup.

Badei and the other defendants were arrested following the coup over accusations that they attacked police facilities and other state buildings in the province of Beni Soweif. The Brotherhood leader is facing trial in 48 court cases and has already been given a number of other sentences, including another life sentence against which he cannot appeal.

Read: Egypt adds 215 anti-coup activists to list of ‘terrorists’