Morsi referred to trial on charges of spying for Qatar

General Prosecutor Hesham Barakat referred former President Mohamed Morsi and several others to trial on Saturday on charges of leaking documents concerning national security to Qatar during his time in office.

Morsi, his personal secretary Amin al-Serafy, his office manager Ahmed Abdel Aty and others have been detained pending investigation into these charges for over a year.

The prosecution hailed the case as “the biggest treason and espionage case in the nation’s history” in its report. 

As popular anger rose against Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s international organization reportedly gave him orders to leak “important documents” to Qatari intelligence and the Qatari television station Al Jazeera.

The current government has often accused Qatar and Al Jazeera of conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood against Egypt.

According to the prosecution, the leaked documents included delicate reports on the Armed Forces, internal and external policies and intelligence reports.

The prosecution alleges Serafy gave the documents to his daughter Karima, who handed them to Jordanian Al Jazeera correspondent Alaa Sablan in Egypt, who flew to Qatar and met with the head of news for Al Jazeera and a Qatari intelligence officer in a hotel. The documents were allegedy traded for a million US dollars, a portion of which the prosecution says was wired to Egypt.

The prosecution has also accused a documentary filmmaker, a journalist in the Brotherhood-affiliated Rassd News Network and an EgyptAir worker in Doha of collaboration in the case.

The former president is accused in another case of conspiring with the militant group Hamas, as well as cases relating to prison escapes and the killing of protesters.