Today, Thursday, an Egyptian court sentenced Mahmoud Ezzat, who was the acting general guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, a life sentence, months after he was arrested in an apartment in Cairo.
The security forces arrested Ezzat last August during a raid on an apartment in the Fifth Settlement, east of Cairo, in a new blow to the group targeted by the authority since 2013 when the current President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi (then Minister of Defense) led a military coup that disrupted the constitution and dismissed the elected President Mohamed Morsi. Who used to belong to the group.
A judicial source said that the ruling issued against Ezzat was based on his conviction in the case known in the media as the events of the Guidance Bureau, as he was accused of several charges, including incitement to violence and providing weapons during clashes outside the group's headquarters between its supporters and opponents in 2013.
Life imprisonment sentences were also issued earlier against a number of Muslim Brotherhood leaders in the same case.
The case relates to clashes on June 30, 2013, in front of the Guidance Office (the group's highest executive body), in the suburb of Mokattam, southeast of Cairo, between supporters and opponents of the group, which resulted in the killing of 9 people and wounding 91 others.
After the arrest of the Muslim Brotherhood’s guide, Mohamed Badie, in August 2013, his deputy, Ezzat, was appointed as the acting guide, and after Ezzat’s arrest last year, the group chose Ibrahim Munir, who resides outside Egypt, as the acting guide.
Since the overthrow of Morsi, who was the first elected civilian president in Egypt, the authorities have continued pursuit campaigns targeting leaders and cadres of the group and charged them with terrorism-related charges, which the group denies and considers it a persecution of it.