A court in Egypt has sentenced a prominent figure of the Muslim Brotherhood movement to one year behind bars on charges of “insulting” a prosecutor.
“The court has decided to imprison the accused, Mohamed el-Beltagy, for one year on charges of insulting the judiciary,” said a senior Egyptian judicial official on Saturday.
The Brotherhood leader’s lawyer Mohammed Abu Leila has said such sentences cannot be appealed.
Beltagy is facing trial alongside Egypt’s ousted President Mohamed Morsi and 13 other Muslim Brotherhood leaders on charges of inciting the killing of anti-government demonstrators outside the presidential palace in the capital, Cairo, in 2012.
In a separate case, Morsi and his co-defendants are standing trial on charges of breaking out of prison during the 2011 revolution that toppled former dictator Hosni Mubarak.
They are also convicted of conspiring with foreign powers and movements in an attempt to destabilize the North African country.
Egypt has been experiencing unrelenting violence since the country’s first democratically-elected president was ousted on July 3, 2013. Hundreds have lost their lives in the ensuing violence across the country.
Since then, Egypt’s military-backed government has launched a bloody crackdown on Morsi’s supporters and arrested thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members, including the party’s senior leaders.
Last December, Cairo officially designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a “terrorist” group, accusing it of being behind a deadly bombing in the city of Mansoura. The Brotherhood condemned the bomb attack, denying any links to the incident.
Human rights groups say as many as 1,400 people have been killed in the political violence that erupted following Morsi’s removal.
MKA/NN/AS
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