Brotherhood calls for Friday protests against Morsi death sentence, police brutality

The Muslim Brotherhood has called for mass demonstrations on Friday to protest against the court ruling that upheld death sentences for former President Mohamed Morsi and other top Brotherhood figures on Tuesday, as well as to protest against ongoing police brutality.

The Cairo Criminal Court upheld the death penalty for Morsi and five others who were convicted of escaping from the Wadi al-Natrun Prison during the 2011 revolution. Earlier on Tuesday, Morsi and 16 others were also sentenced to life in prison on separate charges of espionage, while Brotherhood leaders Khairat al-Shater, Mohamed al-Beltagy and Ahmed Abdel Aty were sentenced to death in that case.

The death sentences were first meted out in May, then sent to the grand mufti for approval. According to the state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram, they can still be appealed.

The Brotherhood's Arabic-language statement decried Tuesday’s ruling as “nonsense” disseminated by judges and a grand mufti who have “sold themselves to the murderous military.”

This was a “trial of the January 25 revolution, its goals, its achievements and those who participated in it,” the group argued.

The statement lambasted the judiciary that issued the sentences, as well as the mufti who approved them, for violating human rights in the name of law and religion while turning a blind eye to the torture, kidnappings and forced disappearances being carried out by Interior Ministry personnel.

On its English-language website, Ikhwanweb, the Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) also condemned the verdict, describing it as “another nail in the coffin for democracy in Egypt.”

In the statement, the FJP exhorted the international community to urge President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to immediately annul the sentences and drop all charges.

“The FJP continues to maintain these charges are wholly fabricated and lacking in any credible evidence,” the statement read. “President Morsi’s trial has fallen far below the most basic international legal standards.”

The FJP further condemned what it described as a “tragic politicized decision, which demonstrates that the highest religious and judiciary bodies of Egypt are willing to join the current regime in willfully ignoring the fundamental principles justice and most basic human rights.”