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 Mursi stood in a cage in court as judge Ahmed Sabry Youssef read
out the ruling against him and 12 other Brotherhood members,
including senior figures Mohamed el-Beltagy and Essam el-Erian. The
sentencing was broadcast live on state television.
The men were convicted on charges of violence, kidnapping and
torture stemming from the killing of protesters during
demonstrations in 2012. They were acquitted of murder charges, which
carry the death sentence.
Displaying a four-finger salute symbolizing resistance to the
state's crackdown on Islamists, defendants chanted "God is Greatest"
after the verdict was read.
The ruling is the first against Mursi, who says he is determined to
reverse what he calls a military coup in 2013 staged by then army
chief, now president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
"His trial has been a travesty of justice, which has been scripted
and controlled by the government and entirely unsupported by
evidence," Amr Darrag, a former minister under Mursi, said in a
statement from Istanbul.
A lawyer for some of the defendants said they would appeal.
After toppling Mursi following mass protests against his rule, Sisi
proceeded to crush the Brotherhood, which he says is part of a
terrorist network that poses an existential threat to the Arab and
Western worlds.
The Brotherhood says it is a peaceful movement that will return to
office through people power, even though demonstrations have fallen
to a trickle.
DEEP STATE
Egypt's deep state apparatus -- the Interior Ministry, intelligence
services and army -- now appears to have a tighter grip than ever on
the biggest Arab state.
While Mursi has become far less relevant, even within the
Brotherhood, Sisi became president after elections last year,
winning over many Egyptians who overlooked widespread allegations of
human rights abuses for the sake of stability.
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Western powers that called for democracy declined to use leverage
against Sisi, the latest military man to seize power.
Mursi, who rose through the ranks of the Brotherhood before winning
the presidency in 2012, was a polarizing figure during his troubled
year in office, which followed the fall of veteran autocrat Hosni
Mubarak in 2011.
His policies alienated secular and liberal Egyptians, who feared
that the Brotherhood -- the main opposition to Mubarak for decades
and popular among many Egyptians for its charity work -- was abusing
power.Protests erupted in late 2012 after Mursi issued a decree
expanding presidential powers -- a move his supporters say was
necessary to prevent a judiciary still packed with Mubarak
appointees from derailing a fragile political transition.Those
demonstrations led to the deaths of protesters, for which
prosecutors argued that Mursi and other Brotherhood leaders were
responsible. Mursi and his co-defendants denied the charges.
Reda Sanoussi, the brother of one of the victims, was dissatisfied
with the dismissal of the murder charges against Mursi.
"I want to enter the cage and pull out his intestines," he told
Reuters.
(Additional reporting by Ahmed Tolba; Writing by Michael Georgy and
Stephen Kalin; Editing by Catherine Evans and Giles Elgood)
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