A Port Said criminal court sentenced to life on Saturday the leader of the banned Muslim Brotherhood Mohamed Badie and other figureheads in the organisation over a violent 2013 incident in the governorate that followed the ouster of late president Mohamed Morsi. The Brotherhood leaders, which include Mohamed El-Beltagy, Safwat Hegazi and nine others, were sentenced to life in prison in a retrial over a Port Said police station incident that followed the violent dispersal of Islamist Rabaa and Nahda sit-ins in August 2013. The retrial comes after the Court of Cassation cancelled in 2017 previous jail sentences against the defendants and ordered their retrial. The prosecution charged the defendants with the murder of five people, the attempted murder of 70 others, vandalising public and private property, the theft of ammunition and weaponry from Port Said's El-Arab police station, and inciting violence and chaos. Saturday's sentence is not final and can still be challenged in front of the Court of Cassation. Life imprisonment is 25 years in prison according to Egyptian law. The life sentence against Badie is the latest in several life imprisonment verdicts in violence-related charges, totalling over 100 years.
