Yesterday, Sunday, the Cairo Criminal Court sentenced Mahmoud Ezzat, a leader in the Muslim Brotherhood, to 25 years in prison, for convicting him in a retrial in the case known in the media as “breaking into the eastern borders.”
The facts of the case in which Mahmoud Ezzat is accused, which he strongly denies, relates to the storming of Egyptian prisons, attacks on security and police facilities, and the killing of officers during the events of the January 25, 2011 revolution, according to the Egyptian authorities.
According to these authorities, the convicts “committed murders that killed 32 prisoners in Abu Zaabal prison, 14 prisoners of Wadi al-Natroun prison, and one of the prisoners of al-Marj prison, and smuggled about 20,000 prisoners from the three mentioned prisons, in addition to the kidnapping of 3 officers and Amin Police from those charged with protecting the borders and forcibly taking them to the Gaza Strip.”
The Egyptian authorities’ investigations stated that the convicts, with the help of members of Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah, and some “Takfiri jihadists” from the Sinai Bedouins, “intentionally committed acts that undermine the country’s independence and territorial integrity, coinciding with the outbreak of the January 25 demonstrations.”
The Cairo Criminal Court had sentenced Mahmoud Ezzat in absentia to death by hanging in the prison break-in case, before his arrest.
Security had arrested Mahmoud Ezzat in August 2020 during a raid on a residential apartment in the Fifth Settlement area, east of Cairo.
After the arrest of the Muslim Brotherhood’s guide, Muhammad Badie, in August 2013, his deputy, Ezzat, was appointed as the acting guide, and after Ezzat’s arrest last year, the group chose Ibrahim Mounir, 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 to launch campaigns of prosecution targeting leaders and cadres of the group, accusing them of terrorism-related charges, which the group denies and considers it persecution.