CAIRO — Egypt sentenced Mahmud Ezzat, the
77-year-old top leader of the
outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, to life in jail
Sunday after he was found guilty of "collaborating with Hamas,” a judicial
source said.
اضافة اعلان
The
Islamist Hamas movement controls the
Israeli-blockaded enclave of Gaza, and espouses the Brotherhood's teachings.
Earlier this year Ezzat was given a separate
life term on terrorism charges in another case.
Many of Egypt's senior Brotherhood leaders,
including the late president Mohamed Morsi, have had the same charges of
espionage for a foreign agent levelled against them in recent years.
Sunday's verdict handed down by a Cairo
criminal court can be appealed, the source added.
Egypt has softened its stance towards Hamas
after accusing it for years of smuggling weapons and insurgent fighters across
the Rafah border to Egypt's restive North Sinai.
In May, Egypt negotiated a ceasefire between
Hamas and Israel after 11 days of heavy fighting that pummeled the densely
populated enclave, and has also been heavily active in its reconstruction.
Ezzat was arrested in August 2020 in Cairo,
after being on the run for several years.
In April 2021, he was sentenced to life
imprisonment on terrorism charges in a separate case.
In 2015, Ezzat was sentenced in absentia to
death, as well as given life imprisonment, after being found guilty of having
supervised the killing of soldiers and government officials.
He was accused of involvement in the murder
of the state prosecutor Hisham Barakat, who died in hospital after a car bomb
tore through his convoy in Cairo in 2015.
The Brotherhood was blacklisted in Egypt in
2013 and deemed a terrorist group, months after the army overthrew Morsi who
hailed from the movement.
Egyptian President
Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was
defence minister when Morsi was removed from power.
Founded in 1928, the Brotherhood later
established itself as the main Islamist opposition movement in Egypt, and
spread regionally with ardent offshoots from Tunisia to
Turkey.
Ezzat is reported to have joined the
Brotherhood in the 1960s, and spent time in jail under Egypt's late presidents Gamal
Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat,and Hosni Mubarak.
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