Rabat – Egyptian former President Mohamed Morsi has died after a court session today, Monday June 17.
The Islamist president was elected after the 2011 Arab Spring, which ended the 30-year rule of Hosni Mubarak.
Morsi served as the fifth president of Egyptfrom July 30, 2012 to July 3, 2013.
Serving only one year of his 4-year term, he was removed from power by a coup d’état in 2013.
The former president was a key figure in the society the Muslim Brotherhood,a transnational Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt by Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna in 1928. He was serving a 7-year-sentence for allegedly falsifying his candidacy application during the 2012 presidential campaign.
The ex-president faced further accusations including inciting supporters to murder a “journalist and two opposition protesters.”
The charges are linked to clashes that erupted between Muslim Brotherhood supporters and opposition protesters in December 2012 in Cairo.
In November 2013, Morsi faced trial along with14 other brotherhood members.
Morsi denied the accusations against him, emphasizing that he was a victim of a military coup.
“I am the president of the republic, according to the constitution of the state,” he said from the dock during his first hearing.
In April 2015, Morsi and the other Brotherhood defendants were sentenced to 20 years in prison “inciting” murder in addition to fraud.
He was also sentenced to a further 25 years in prison in September 2016 for passing intelligence to Qatar.
An Egyptian court sentenced the former president to another three years in December 2017 on “charges of insulting the judiciary.”
Born in 1951, Morsi studied engineering at Cairo University and moved to the US in the 70s to finish his PhD.
On his returnEgypt, the former president became head of the engineering department at Zagazig University.
In April 2012, Morsi entered the presidential campaign as the Muslim Brotherhood candidate. Standing on an anti corruption platform, he opposed the elites from the Hosni Mubarak era and called for radical change.
Opposition voices criticized Morsi for failing in his mission, accusing him of allowing “Islamists to monopolize” Egypt’s political scene, the BBC reported.
In 2018, a panel of British MPs and lawyers issued a report, suggesting that Morsi was being held in standards lower than “those sanctioned by international law.”
The situation, according to the report, could “lead to an early death.”
According to the Retention Review Panel (DRP), Morsi was receiving “inadequate medical care, particularly inadequate management of his diabetes, and inadequate management of his liver disease.”
