The defence team representing ousted president Mohamed Morsi and other Muslim Brotherhood members issued an appeal Monday against the verdicts issued in the “Qatar espionage” case.
The appeal requests that the death sentence issued to six leading Brotherhood figures in the case be annulled, in addition to the prison sentence handed to Morsi, according to state-run Al-Ahram newspaper.
While Morsi was acquitted from some charges in the “Qatar espionage” case, in June he was sentenced to 15 years in jail in the same case over different charges.
The verdict was following the case’s 99 trial sessions. The defendants in the case, which include Morsi’s head of office Ahmed Abdel Ati and his presidential secretary Amin El-Sherafy, were accused of leaking national security documents and information related to national security to Qatar
Also in June, the other six defendants received death sentences after the grand mufti argued that the “crimes of the defendants are similar to that of treason” in which the punishment should be death.
The presiding judge, Mohamed Shereen Fahmy, read out the decision of the grand mutfi, who said that the six defendants endangered national security which is “worse than killing a person or opposing God’s laws”.
The six defendants included five men, Alaa Siblan, Mohamed Kilany, Ahmed Afify, Ahmed Ismail, and Ibrahim Helal, and one woman, Asmaa El-Khatib.
In September 2014, late prosecutor general Hisham Barakat had referred the defendants to criminal court on charges of illegally obtaining copies of intelligence reports and confidential reports on the Armed Forces’ plans. They were also accused of intending to deliver the documents to the Qatari satellite network Al Jazeera.
The court described the documents as “top secret”, discussing the positions and weaponry of the Egyptian Armed Forces.
