Egyptian Court Sentences Two Al Jazeera Journalists to Death

Former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, already sentenced to death, was also given 15 more years.

Former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi raises his hands in a makeshift courtroom at the national police academy, in an eastern suburb of Cairo, Egypt, Saturday, 18 June 2016. (Photo: AP)

An Egyptian court on Saturday sentenced six people, including two Al-Jazeera employees, to death for allegedly passing documents related to national security to Qatar and the Doha-based TV network during the rule of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.

Morsi, the case’s top defendant, and two of his aides were sentenced to 25 years in prison. Morsi and his secretary, Amin el-Sirafy, each received an additional 15-year sentence for a lesser crime. El-Sirafy’s daughter, Karima, was also sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected leader, was ousted by the military in July 2013 and has already been sentenced to death in another case. That death sentence and another two – life and 20 years in prison – are under appeal.

His Muslim Brotherhood was banned and declared a terrorist organisation after his ouster.

Khalid Radwan, a producer at a Brotherhood-linked TV channel, received a 15-year prison sentence.

The two Al-Jazeera employees – identified by the judge as news producer Alaa Omar Mohammed and news editor Ibrahim Mohammed Hilal – were sentenced to death in absentia along with Asmaa al-Khateib, who worked for Rasd, a media network widely suspected of links to Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood.

All of Saturday’s verdicts can be appealed. Of the case’s 11 defendants, seven, including Morsi, are in custody.

Amnesty International called for the death sentences to be immediately thrown out and for the “ludicrous charges against the journalists to be dropped.”

There was no immediate comment from Al-Jazeera on Saturday’s verdicts, but a news story on the Al-Jazeera English website identified Hilal as a former director of news at Al-Jazeera’s Arabic channel and said Alaa Omar Mohammed was an Al-Jazeera employee until last year.

The three other defendants sentenced to death Saturday are documentary producer Ahmed Afify, EgyptAir cabin crew member Mohammed Keilany and academic Ahmed Ismail.

This 11 May 2015 photo shows Al-Jazeera English’s former acting bureau chief, Canadian-Egyptian journalist Mohammed Fahmy, speaking during a press conference in Cairo, Egypt. (Photo: AP)

Judge Mohammed Shirin Fahmy recommended the death sentence for the six last month. Under standard procedure in cases of capital punishment, his recommendation went to the office of Egypt’s Grand Mufti, the nation’s top Muslim theological authority, for endorsement.

They are more dangerous than spies, because spies are usually foreigners, but these are, regrettably, Egyptians who betrayed the trust. No ideology can ever justify the betrayal of one’s country.

Fahmy quoted the Mufti’s office as saying the six had sought to harm the country when they passed to a foreign nation details of the army’s deployment as well as reports prepared by intelligence agencies.

(With AP inputs)