Cairo : The Egyptian prosecution Monday referred 105 Muslim Brotherhood members, including the group’s top leader Mohamed Badie, to criminal court for inciting violence and killings last year following the removal of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, the official MENA news agency reported.
The defendants are accused of committing acts of violence in the Suez Canal province of Ismailia that led to the killing of three citizens in reaction to Morsi’s removal by the military in early July 2013.
Badie, who is in custody for over a year now, has previously been sentenced to death over similar charges but the verdicts that could be appealed have not been carried out and the Grand Mufti rejected his execution for lack of evidence, Xinhua reported. He was also sentenced to 25 years in jail last week, which was not his first time for such a penalty.
Morsi himself is on trial over various charges, including a 2011 jailbreak, espionage, ordering the killing of protestors, insulting the judiciary and leaking classified documents to Qatar.
Since the powerful military ousted the Brotherhood’s Morsi, the country’s first democratically-elected president, the new leadership has been carrying out a massive crackdown on the group and its supporters and have blacklisted the group as “a terrorist organisation.”
The group has been accused of targeting the army and police with attacks that killed hundreds of security personnel, the charges that its leaders have repeatedly denied.