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Egypt: Court adjourns hearing session in ousted president Morsi’s trial

September 28, 2018 at 12:43 am

A sign reading that Mohamed Morsi is Egypt’s legitimate President during a conference to mark the fourth anniversary of the Rabaa massacre [Middle East Monitor]

A Cairo criminal court adjourned yesterday a hearing session for former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and others in the case known as the “break-in of the eastern border” only minutes after it had started due to repeated failures in the courtroom’s loudspeakers.

One of the defendants, the Muslim Brotherhood group’s Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie, was sitting on a wooden chair in the courtroom’s cage as he was suffering from back pain. When the court checked the presence of the defendants, the microphones would not work, which disrupted the session.

Read: Egypt removes Brotherhood leader from terror list

The court was set to hear the testimony of former interior minister Habib Al-Adli, who served during the era of ousted president Hosni Mubarak.

A criminal court had handed down death sentences to former president Mohamed Morsi, who was ousted in a military coup in 2013, in addition to Badie and a number of other Muslim Brotherhood leaders. Twenty more members of the group were sentenced to life. But last November the Court of Cassation, Egypt’s top court, overturned the sentences and ordered a retrial for all of the defendants.

Yesterday’s hearing session was part of the retrial.