The Cairo Criminal Court headed by Hussien Kandil, the supreme guide of the now outlawed Muslim Brotherhood was sentenced to life on Sunday, Mohamed Badie and other four prominent figures from the Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood leaders Mohamed El-Beltagy and Essam El-Eryan, as well as Islamic cleric Safwat Hegazy, were also sentenced to life of 25 years in prison.
The court also sentenced 15 years in prison the former minister of supply Bassem Ouda and other defendants to 10 years.
This came during the retrial of defendants involved in the case known as ‘Al-Bahr Al-Azam,’ which includes 15 defendants.
Previously, the Court of Cassation has dropped a previous verdict and decided to retry the case. The case goes back to clashes on 15 July 2013 in the Giza district, in which five people died.
The general prosecution charged the defendants with several charges including terrorism, attempted murder, using force, forming an armed gang to attack citizens and resisting the authorities, possessing firearms and unlicensed ammunition, and joining a terrorist group.
Badie is a defendant in other cases related to murder, and attacking public institutions in different cities after the violent dispersal of the pro-Morsi sit-ins. He has already received a number of death and life sentences, and he is also facing trial for leading an ‘armed sit-in’ in Rabaa Al-Adaweya square, where hundreds of Morsi supporters were killed.
The Brotherhood was declared a terrorist organisation on 25 December 2013, although it was originally outlawed in September 2013. In addition, the assets of the Brotherhood members and other prominent Islamists were frozen on the orders of late Prosecutor General Hisham Barakat. The procedure began in July 2013, immediately following the ouster of Morsi.
