Exactly three years after a
high-profile jailbreak in Egypt, former President Mohamed Morsy arrived at a
Cairo court Tuesday to face charges related to the escape, state media
reported.
Nineteen Muslim Brotherhood members,
including Morsy, allegedly broke out of the prison in 2011, state-run EGYNews
reported.
At the time, the Muslim Brotherhood
was banned in the country. But the Islamist group became Egypt's most powerful
political force after longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak was toppled in February
2011.
Morsy and dozens of co-defendants
are accused of collaborating with the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and the
Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah to escape from the Wadi-Natroun prison, the
state-owned Ahram Online news agency said.
The defendants are also accused of
attempting to murder police officers, Ahram Online said.
The trial is one of several that
Morsy is facing. He has also been charged with raiding other prisons, killing
soldiers and officers in Rafah, and incitement to murder in connection with
protests against his rule in 2012.
A
short tenure
Morsy became Egypt's first
democratically elected president in 2012 after the fall of Mubarak, who had
ruled Egypt for 29 years.
But just one year later, Morsy was
deposed in a military coup. The U.S. State Department called for
the military to release him, saying his detention was politically
motivated.
Opponents accused Morsy of pursuing
an Islamist agenda and excluding other factions from the government.
But supporters said that he wasn't
given a fair chance and that the military has returned to the authoritarian
practices of Mubarak.
Egyptian official killed
Morsy's trial wasn't the only
significant news out of Egypt on Tuesday.
A senior aide to Egypt's interior
minister was killed in the Giza area of Cairo, a presidential spokesman said.
Gen. Mohammed Said was shot and killed near the Pyramids,
spokesman Ehab Badaway said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for
the attack.
Last September, the interior
minister himself was targeted in an assassination attempt.
Egypt's Interior Ministry oversees
the country's police force, which has led a fierce and sometimes deadly
crackdown against protesters over the past several months.
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