An Egyptian judical panel upheld Sunday a 250 million Egyptian pounds fine imposed on former president Mohamed Morsi and other Muslim Brotherhood figures as compensation for damages caused during the Wadi Natroun Prison break during the 2011 uprising.
In June 2015, a Cairo criminal court sentenced Morsi and five other top Brotherhood figures, including Mohamed Badie, Saad El-Katatni and Essam El-Erian, to death over charges of “damaging and setting fire to prison buildings,” “murder,” “attempted murder,” “looting prison weapons depots” and “releasing prisoners” while escaping from the prison located outside Cairo.
The court also ruled that defendants should pay the interior ministry 250 million pounds as compensation, before the defendants appealed the verdict.
However, Ahmed Massoud, a litigator for Egypt’s State Lawsuits Authority, which is a judicial entity that represents the state in lawsuits, told Aswat Masriya that a special civil panel for compensation issued a final verdict upholding the same fine amount. The death sentence is still being appealed.
“The compensation will be taken from Muslim Brotherhood frozen assets supervised by the state,” he said.
Abdel-Moniem Abdel-Maqsod, Morsi’s lawyer, descibed Sunday’s verdict as “illegal”.
“The whole case is being appealed by the defandants including the amount of money, and no final verdict had been issued, so the panel’s desicion doesn’t make sense,” the lawyer said.
A total of 129 people are on trial in this case, with only 27 in custody. The court has sentenced 21 of the defendants to life in prison, including Islamic preacher Safwat Hegazy and leading Brotherhood figure Mohamed El-Beltagy.
source: Ahram Online
