Egyptian court sentences Muslim Brotherhood's top leader to life

COURT|CRIME|TERRORISM

CAIRO - An Egyptian court sentenced on Saturday the Supreme Guide of the banned Muslim Brotherhood group, Mohamed Badie, to life in prison over a violent 2013 incident, official media reported.

Along with Badie, Mohamed El-Beltagy, Safwat Hegazi, and nine others of the group's leaders were sentenced to life in prison in a retrial over a police station incident in the coastal Port Said province that followed the ouster of late president Mohamed Morsi, according to state-run Ahram Online news website.

The retrial comes after the Court of Cassation canceled in 2017 previous jail sentences against the defendants and ordered their retrial, Ahram Online added. 

The prosecution charged the defendants with the murder of five people, the attempted murder of 70 others, vandalizing public and private property, the theft of ammunition and weaponry from Port Said's El-Arab police station, and inciting violence and chaos.

The sentence is not final and can still be challenged in front of the Court of Cassation, according to Ahram Online. 

Life imprisonment is 25 years in prison according to Egyptian law. 

Badie, the Muslim Brotherhood's elected eighth chief in 2010, was handed a death sentence in another case for ordering the murder of 10 people in Cairo in 2013. 

He also received life imprisonment verdicts in violence-related charges, totaling over 100 years.