CAIRO– A Cairo court has set January 28 as the starting date for the trial of ousted president Mohamed Morsi and 130 others charged with illegally breaking out of prison in 2011.
Defendants include Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie; his deputy, Mahmoud Ezzat; former parliament speaker Saad al-Katatni; and senior group members Mohamed al-Beltagi, Essam Erian and Saad al-Husseini, according to a statement issued by investigating judge Hassan Samir.
The list also includes members of Palestinian resistance faction Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, along with prominent Qatar-based Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
According to Samir’s statement, 800 foreign operatives crossed the border into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula from the Gaza Strip during the January 2011 revolution that ousted longstanding president Hosni Mubarak.
The statement claims that the operatives attacked police and government facilities in Sinai, leaving several policemen dead, before moving on to Wadi Natrun, Abu Zaabal and Al-Marg prisons in northern Cairo, all of which they allegedly broke into.
The statement goes on to say the attackers killed more than 50 policemen and prisoners before helping their associates escape with more than 20,000 other inmates.
“They abducted three police officers and a non-commissioned officer and took them to Gaza,” Samir alleges in the statement.
