An Egyptian court has sentenced Islamic leader Hazem Salah Abu-Ismail to one year in prison for contempt of court.
Judge Mohammed Fahmy handed the ruling during a fraud trial against Abu-Ismail on Saturday, the official Middle East News Agency (MENA) reported.
Fahmy reportedly ordered Abu-Ismail to be taken from the courtroom cage back to prison, accusing him of disrupting the hearing. After a short recess, the judge announced the jail sentence.
This is the second time the same court handed down a one-year sentence to Abu-Ismail this year.
The top Islamic leader was sentenced in January for insulting judges during the fraud trial, in which he told judges that the court was void and that Egypt’s judiciary was not a real judiciary in the first place.
Abu-Ismail was a top ally of ousted President Mohamed Morsi and also a presidential hopeful in the 2012 election.
The military-installed rulers in Egypt have launched a heavy-handed crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood supporters after the army ousted the country’s first democratically-elected president on July 3, 2013.
Since Morsi’s removal, thousands of the Muslim Brotherhood members as well as the group’s supporters have been arrested and accused of inciting unrest in the country.
Amnesty International had earlier criticized Egyptian authorities for using an “unprecedented scale” of violence against anti-government protesters.
CAH/HSN
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