Egypt court upholds 3-year jail term for ex-President Morsi

Egypt’s top appeals court on Monday upheld a three-year prison sentence and hefty damages on deposed Islamist President Mohammed Morsi on charges of insulting the judiciary, state media reported.

The Court of Cassation also confirmed the same sentence for 19 other defendants in the same case.

The initial sentence was issued in 2017 by the Cairo Criminal Court that convicted Morsi of defaming the judiciary in a televised speech he made in 2013 when he was in power.

In his speech, Morsi accused a judge of overseeing fraud in previous elections.

The criminal court had also ordered Morsi to pay one million Egyptian pounds (56,270 dollars) in damages to that judge.

Five other defendants were ordered to pay a fine of 30,000 Egyptian pounds each in the case.

They include Alaa Abdel-Fatah, a leading pro-democracy campaigner, who rose to prominence during the 2011 uprising that toppled long-time dictator Hosny Mubarak.

Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president was toppled by the army in mid-2013 following mass protests against his rule.

He has been tried in several different cases since his ouster.

Morsi is serving a final sentence of 20 years in prison in a separate case related to inciting deadly attacks on anti-Islamist protesters in 2012.

In 2017, the Court of Cassation upheld a separate 25-year jail sentence for Morsi on charges of harming national security by leaking secret state documents to his ally Qatar while he was in office.