Alwaght- According to Human right watch, the first trial of Egyptian ousted president was compromised by due process violations, the appearance of bias and an absence of conclusive evidence. He was convicted on April 21, 2015, and sentenced to 20 years in prison without parole on Tuesday over the killing of demonstrators in 2012.
Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director reports that a review of the prosecution’s case file summary by Human Rights Watch found little evidence other than the testimony of military and police officers to support Morsi’s conviction for complicity in the unlawful detention, torture, and intimidation of protesters carried out by top aides and Muslim Brotherhood supporters when he was president in December 2012.
The prosecution’s case was founded on the conjecture that Morsi was responsible simply because of his relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood. Whatever political responsibility Morsi may have, the prosecution didn’t establish his criminal guilt in this case .
The verdict against Morsi and 14 other co-defendants, six of them in absentia, was the first against him since he was arrested and removed from office by the military in July 2013. He faces five other ongoing prosecutions. Morsi’s defense team said they would appeal the conviction .
The charges against the 15 defendants arose from a deadly street fight between supporters and opponents of Morsi outside Egypt’s Ettihadeya presidential palace on the night of December 5-6, 2012. The violence followed days of demonstrations against a decree issued by Morsi that November which placed himself, as president, and the Constituent Assembly above judicial review .
A Human Rights Watch review of an 80-page summary of the prosecution’s case showed that the allegations against Morsi relied primarily on the testimony of Maj. Gen. Mohamed Zaki, the commander of the Republican Guard, a division of the army tasked with protecting the presidency. Zaki testified that there “must have been” an agreement between Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to disperse anti-government protesters by force but gave no evidence to support his hypothesis .
