An Egyptian court Tuesday sentenced ousted president Mohamed Morsi to 20 years in prison for abuses against protesters but acquitted the Islamist leader of charges carrying a possible death penalty. Morsi was convicted of ordering the arrest and torture of demonstrators involved in clashes in 2012 when he was president, in a verdict Amnesty International denounced as a "travesty of justice". Fourteen others were convicted of the same charges, with most also sentenced by the Cairo court to 20 years in jail.
It acquitted the defendants of inciting murder in connection with the deaths of a journalist and two protesters during the December 5, 2012 clashes outside the presidential palace in Cairo. Morsi, dressed in a white prison uniform and standing in a sound-proof cage, raised his fists when the verdict was announced, an AFP correspondent reported from the court room.
Defence lawyers said they would appeal the convictions while rights groups voiced alarm at the ruling, the first in a series of trials Morsi is facing. "This verdict shatters any remaining illusion of independence and impartiality in Egypt's criminal justice system," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Amnesty International. She called for a full retrial or the ex-president's release.
Egypt's first freely elected leader, Morsi came to power following the 2011 ouster of long-time autocrat Hosni Mubarak in a popular uprising. But after just a year in power, Morsi was himself toppled by then-army chief and now President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi following mass street protests. Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood has been blacklisted and targeted in a government crackdown that has seen hundreds killed and thousands thrown in jail.
Other Brotherhood leaders have been sentenced to death and Tuesday's decision to acquit Morsi on the incitement to murder charge left some surprised. "We were expecting them to be convicted of murder," Ramy Ghanem, a lawyer for an anti-Morsi protester who was wounded in the clashes, told AFP.