CAIRO // An Egyptian appeals court has overturned the death sentence handed down to deposed president Mohammed Morsi in one of four trials since his overthrow in 2013.
Morsi was sentenced to death in June last year on charges of taking part in prison breaks and violence against policemen during the 2011 uprising.
The court of cassation on Tuesday ordered that Morsi be retried, which means he is no longer under threat of execution, although he is still serving three lengthy jail sentences.
Morsi, a key figure in the Muslim Brotherhood who was elected president after the Arab Spring uprising, was sentenced to 20 years in prison without parole on charges arising from the killing of protesters in December 2012. He was also sentenced to 40 years on charges of spying for Qatar and handed a life sentence on charges of spying for the Palestinian group Hamas.
Five other leaders of the now outlawed Muslim Brotherhood — including the supreme guide of the group, Mohamed Badie, who also received death sentences in June last year — will also be given a new trial.
The court also struck down life sentences passed in the same case against 21 Brotherhood members on Tuesday.
Last month, the same appeals court upheld a 20-year jail sentence handed down to Morsi in April in a separate trial on charges of ordering the use of deadly force against protesters during his year in power.
Morsi came to power in 2011 after toppling president Hosni Mubarak who was in power for 30 years.
But the Brotherhood leader was removed from power in mid-2013 by then army chief and now president Abdel Fattah El Sisi following vast protests against his divisive first year of rule.
In the weeks that followed, hundreds of Morsi’s supporters were killed in clashes and thousands were locked up in a clampdown against the group.
Mr El Sisi has since tried to crush the Brotherhood, which has been deemed to be part of a terrorist network that poses an existential threat to the Arab and western worlds.
But the Brotherhood – Egypt’s oldest political movement – says its activities are entirely peaceful.
Extremist militants, accused of supporting the Brotherhood, have waged an insurgency that has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since Morsi was removed from power.
A judge in one of Morsi’s trials this month escaped unharmed when a car bomb exploded in Cairo.
* Agence France-Presse, Reuters
