A court in Egypt has sentenced former President Mohammed Morsi to 20 years in prison over the killing of protesters while he was in power.
It is the first ruling he has faced since his ouster by the military and is one of several upcoming trials he faces.
Morsi was deposed by the army in July 2013 following mass street protests against his administration. Since then, the authorities have banned his Muslim Brotherhood party and arrested thousands of his supporters.
Morsi and several other Muslim Brotherhood leaders were accused of inciting supporters to kill a journalist and opposition protesters in clashes outside the presidential palace in late 2012.
Some of the charges against Morsi include colluding with foreign militants in a plot to free Islamists in mass prison breaks during the 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak.
Espionage and conspiring to commit terrorist acts in Egypt with the Palestinian movement Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as well as endangering national security by leaking state secrets and sensitive documents to Qatar via the Doha-based Al Jazeera network.
As crowd of protesters against his administration grew outside the palace, Morsi was said to have ordered the police to disperse them. They refused, so the Muslim Brotherhood brought in their own supporters. Eleven people died in the
ensuing clashes, mostly from the Brotherhood.
Ahead of the verdict, the Brotherhood accused one- time army chief and now President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi of using the judiciary “as a weapon.”
Morsi himself has rejected the authority of the courts, shouting during his first trial that he was the victim of a military coup.
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