Cairo — An Egyptian court upheld on Tuesday a death sentence against ousted president Mohamed Morsi for plotting jailbreaks and attacks on police during the 2011 uprising. The court had initially sentenced Morsi and more than 100 other defendants to death last month. Tuesday's ruling comes after the court consulted Egypt's Grand Mufti, the government interpreter of Islamic law who plays an advisory role. In the Wadi Natroun jailbreak case, the prosecution charged Morsi and 130 co-defendants, many tried in absentia, with damaging and setting fire to prison buildings, murder, attempted murder, looting prison weapons depots and releasing prisoners while escaping from the prison during the January 2011 revolution. According to the prosecution, the prisoners who escaped include members of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hezbollah, as well as militants and criminals. Prosecutors said that over 800 fighters from Gaza had infiltrated Egypt and used rocket-propelled grenades and weapons to storm three prisons, abducting four policemen and killing several others. Earlier on Tuesday, the same court sentenced Morsi to life in prison on charges of spying for the Palestinian Hamas movement, Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah, and Iran. Tuesday's verdicts can be appealed. In the jailbreak trial, exiled Egyptian-born cleric Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, who commands huge influence through his appearances on Al-Jazeera television from his base in Qatar, was also condemned to death in absentia. More than 80 others were also sentenced to death in absentia. Judge Shaaban El-Shami, first gave a history of the Muslim Brotherhood, before handing down his sentence of life imprisonment for conspiring with foreign group. He said the Grand Mufti, Egypt's top religious authority, had said in his opinion that the death sentence was permissible for the defendants who had been referred to him. The case relates to conspiring with foreign groups, including the Palestinian Hamas, which rules Gaza. Morsi, dressed in a blue prison suit, was calm and smiled slightly as the judge read out the verdict in the court in the Police Academy. — Agencies
