Morsi gets 3 years in jail for insulting judiciary!

Cairo: Egypt’s former president Mohammed Morsi was on Saturday sentenced to three years in prison and ordered to pay hefty damages on charges of insulting the judiciary.The Cairo Criminal Court, which issued the sentence, convicted Morsi of defaming the judiciary in a public speech he made more than four years ago “with the aim of spreading hate,” according to state television.
In 2013, Morsi, when he was in office, accused in a televised speech a judge of overseeing fraud in previous elections.
The court on Saturday ordered Morsi to pay 1 million Egyptian pounds ($56,270) to that judge.
The court also sentenced 19 co-defendants in the same case, including ex-parliament speaker Saad al Katatni, to three years in prison each.
Initial legal sources said Morsi and 18 other defendants had been given the jail term.
Five other accused were ordered to pay a fine of 30,000 Egyptian pounds each. They include Alaa Abdel Fatah, a leading pro-democracy campaigner, who rose to prominence during the 2011 uprising that toppled long-time president Hosni Mubarak.
In a further verdict, the same court ordered 23 of the total 25 defendants, including Morsi, to pay 1 million Egyptian pounds each to the Judges’ Club, Egypt’s judicial union. The defendants comprise Islamists, secular activists, ex-members of parliament, lawyers and journalists, who were convicted of defaming the country’s judiciary in different media comments. All the rulings can be appealed. The rights group Amnesty International previously criticised the case against the 25.
“This trial is an attempt to silence criticism of a judiciary that has itself become a source of human rights violations,” said Najia Bounaim, the watchdog’s North Africa campaign director.
Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, was toppled by the army in mid-2013 following mass protests against his rule. He has been tried in several different cases since his ouster.
Morsi is serving a final sentence of 20 years in prison in a separate case related to inciting deadly attacks on anti-Islamist protesters in 2012.
In September, Egypt’s top appeals court upheld a separate 25-year jail sentence for Morsi on charges of harming national security by leaking secret state documents to his ally Qatar while he was in office.  — dpa