Egypt: Beltagy calls on Mubarak to provide testimony

A leading member of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood has asked that ousted president Hosni Mubarak offer his testimony as a witness in the court case in which he and former President Mohamed Morsi are accused of breaking into prisons during the 2011 uprising and spying for Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

Mohamed Beltagy was standing before the Cairo Criminal Court yesterday along with former president Morsi, who was ousted in a military coup in 2013, and others.

The court adjourned the trial until 19 July when former interior minister Mahmoud Wagdy is set to offer his testimony in court.

Beltagy asked for Mubarak and a number of former ministers and prime ministers to testify in court.

In November 2016, the Court of Cassation accepted Morsi and other defendants’ appeals against death sentences and prison terms handed to them in the case, while the Court of Cassation overturned the rulings and ordered a retrial.

Read: Morsi’s son asks when violations against his father will end

Former President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular revolution in 2011 after ruling the country for 30 years amid wide anger over corruption and police brutality. Morsi was elected as the country’s first civilian president in 2012 in the first democratic election to be held in the north African state but was ousted in a coup in 2013 by his defence minister Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi who later became president.

Since the 2013 military coup, Egyptian authorities have launched an unprecedented crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood and all opposition groups with mass trials being held with hundreds of defendants being handed their sentences at once without the opportunity of defence. Local and international human rights organisations such as Amnesty International have said the trials are “politically motivated.”