Amnesty International slams Morsi death sentence as 'charade'
Amnesty International has denounced the death penalty handed down to former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi as "a charade based on null and void procedures."
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“The fact that he was held for months incommunicado without judicial oversight and that he didn’t have a lawyer to represent him during the investigations makes these trials nothing but a charade based on null and void procedures,” Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Program Said Boumedouha said on Saturday.
He added that the death sentence “shows a complete disregard for human rights.”
On Saturday, a court in Egypt sentenced Morsi along with 105 others to death for a mass prison break in 2011 during the country’s revolution against long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak.
Boumedouha called on Egyptian officials to either release Morsi immediately or retry him in “a civilian court with full fair-trial guarantees.”
“Any further criminal proceedings must be in line with Egyptian law and international standards,” he added, noting that the death penalty has become the favorite tool for the Egyptian authorities “to purge the political opposition.”
The death sentences are to be referred to the Grand Mufti, Egypt’s highest religious authority, for consultative review and the final decision will be pronounced on June 2. The Grand Mufti's verdict is non-binding on the court.
Back in April, Morsi was given a 20-year prison term in a separate trial on charges of protester deaths in 2012. The case stemmed from the deaths and torture of demonstrators outside Morsi’s presidential palace in December 2012.
In July 2013, Morsi, the country’s first democratically-elected president, was ousted in a military coup led by the former head of the armed forces and the current President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
The Egyptian government has been cracking down on any opposition since Morsi was ousted, banning the Muslim Brotherhood movement and arresting thousands of his supporters.
