The Interim Supreme Leader of the Brotherhood of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mahmoud Ezzat, was sentenced to life on Thursday by the Cairo Criminal Court, a judicial source said.
Arrested in Cairo in August after seven years on the run, Mahmoud Ezzat, was convicted in a new trial, in particular for
"incitement to murder"
and for having
"supplied weapons"
to demonstrators in front of the headquarters of the brotherhood in 2013, we added from the same source.
Read also: Egypt: start of the trial of a senior Muslim Brotherhood leader
Considered a terrorist organization in Egypt since the summer of 2013, the Brotherhood of the Muslim Brotherhood is now almost wiped out.
In 2015, Mahmoud Ezzat, now 76 years old, had already been sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment but also to death, for the assassination of soldiers and state officials, including former attorney general Hicham Barakat.
Founded in 1928, the brotherhood established itself in the mid-twentieth century as the main opposition movement in Egypt.
But the Muslim Brotherhood was removed from the political landscape in 2013, after the brief one-year term of one of their own, Mohamed Morsi.
The first democratically elected president after the popular revolt of 2011, Mohamed Morsi was deposed in 2013 by the army, then led by Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi - who has since become president -, thanks to mass demonstrations.
A member of the Muslim Brotherhood since the 1960s, Mahmoud Ezzat was imprisoned under Presidents Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak.
Hundreds of his supporters were killed in a single day in August 2013 during protests in Cairo.
Thousands more were jailed, dozens executed and others fled abroad.
Mohamed Morsi himself died in the middle of a trial in June 2019.
