Egypt sentences former president Mohammed Morsi to death for 2011 prison break
Cairo: An Egyptian court sentenced deposed Islamist president Mohammed Morsi and more than 100 other defendants to death on Saturday over jail breaks during the 2011 uprising.
Morsi was in the caged dock when the judge read out his verdict. Many of those sentenced were tried in absentia, including prominent Islamic cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi who resides in Qatar.
The country's first freely elected president was ousted by then army chief and now President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in July 2013 following mass street protests demanding the Islamist's resignation after just a year in power.
His overthrow triggered a government crackdown on his Muslim Brotherhood movement in which hundreds of people have died and thousands been imprisoned.
Rights groups accuse Sisi's regime widely backed by Egyptians tired of years of political turmoil of using the judiciary as a tool to repress opposition.
Morsi was sentenced last month to 20 years in jail for inciting violence against protesters in 2012 when he was president, in a verdict Amnesty International denounced as a "travesty of justice".
Morsi and 130 others, including dozens of members of the Palestinian Hamas movement and Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah group, are accused of escaping from prisons and attacking police during the 2011 uprising against longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
Twenty-seven defendants including Morsi are in custody, while the rest, including prominent Qatar-based cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, were tried in absentia.
Some 850 people were killed during the anti-Mubarak uprising as protesters rallied primarily against decades of police abuses.
Four years after that revolt, the Muslim Brotherhood has been blamed for most of the unrest in Egypt.
Sisi has vowed to eradicate the Brotherhood, an 87-year-old movement that topped successive polls between Mubarak's fall and Morsi's presidential election victory in May 2012.
The authorities designated it a terrorist group in December 2013, making even verbal expressions of support punishable by stiff jail terms.
In Saturday's second case, Morsi and 35 co-defendants, including Brotherhood leaders, are accused of conspiring with foreign powers, Hamas and Shiite Iran to destabilise Egypt.
They are accused of providing the Islamic republic's elite Revolutionary Guards with security reports in order to destabilise the country.
Prosecutors say the defendants carried out espionage activity on behalf of the international Muslim Brotherhood organisation and Hamas from 2005 to August 2013 "with the aim of perpetrating terror attacks in the country in order to spread chaos and topple the state".
During Morsi's presidency, ties flourished between Cairo and Hamas, the Palestinian affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood which controls neighbouring Gaza.
But Egypt's new authorities accuse Hamas of helping jihadists carry out attacks inside the country.
In addition to Saturday's verdicts, Morsi faces two other trials -- for insulting the judiciary, and spying for Qatar, a key backer of the Muslim Brotherhood.
