cairo: An Egyptian prosecutor yesterday accused the ousted Islamist president of passing state secrets to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, the first such explicit detail in an ongoing espionage trial.
If convicted, Mohamed Mursi could face capital punishment. He already stands accused of a string of other charges, some of which also carry the death penalty, levelled as part of a crackdown on his Muslim Brotherhood group after the military deposed him last summer.
At yesterday’s hearing, part of which was aired on state television, the prosecution accused Mursi and 35 other Brotherhood members of conspiring to destabilise the country and cooperating with foreign militant groups — including Palestinian Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
The case’s chief prosecutor, Tamer Al Firgani, said Mursi, his aides and senior Brotherhood members had “handed over secrets to foreign countries, among them national defence secrets, and handed over a number of security reports to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in order to destabilise the country’s security and stability.”
Al Firgani, divulging details of the charges, said national security reports meant for only Mursi to see were emailed to some of these foreign militant groups. One report, he said, was sent to the Iranians about the activities of Shias in Egypt. Iran is mostly Shia.
Mursi started off his time in office with repeated tirades against Iran over its support to Syrian President Bashar Assad, but soon warmed up to the Islamic Republic, allowing its tourists to come to Egypt for the first time in decades and founding a four-nation contact group on the Syrian war that included Iran.
Mursi and his co-defendants were present at the hearing without their defence team, which had walked out of the previous hearing in protest over the fact that the defendants were being held in a glass sound-proof cage. Defence lawyers appointed by the bar association were present in their place.
The cage was introduced after Mursi and his co-defendants interrupted the proceedings of other court cases by talking over the judge and chanting slogans. The cage is fitted to give the judge sole control over whether the defendants can be heard or not when speaking.
The trial, which began on 16 February, is set to resume on 27 February.
Meanwhile, a court yesterday postponed the jailbreak trial of Mursi after defence lawyers requested that the judges withdraw from the case. The trial, one of three cases against Mursi, is part of a relentless government crackdown targeting him and his Muslim Brotherhood movement since his ouster by the army in July.
“The court decided to stop looking into the case until a decision is taken on the recuse request” filed by defence lawyers, presiding judge Shaaban Al Shamy said before ending yesterday’s session.
An appeal court is to look into the request on March 1 and decide whether to appoint a new panel of judges, a defence lawyer Mohamed Abou Leila said.
Guardain & Agencies
