MB leader Badie sentenced to life for ‘illegal border crossing’

CAIRO - 7 September 2019: Former supreme guide of the banned Muslim Brotherhood (MB) group Mohamed Badie and ten other Muslim Brotherhood members were sentenced to life imprisonment (25 years in jail) in a trial dubbed in media as "illegal crossing of eastern borders" on Saturday.

MB leaders Mohamed Beltagy and Essam El-Erian are among the convicts who were handed down life imprisonment, stated a Cairo criminal court, held in Torah, southern Cairo.The life imprisonment term is unchallengeable and final.

The incident occurred in 2011 amid the events of January 25 Revolution as foreign militants illegally entered Sinai and raided Wadi Al-Natroun prison to free the brotherhood’s prisoners, including Morsi who called the Qatari Al-Jazeera TV channel via satellite phone once he got out on January 28, 2011, the day known as “Fury Friday”.

In January 2018, the Court of Cassation suspended another Cairo Criminal Court’s death sentences against late President Mohamed Morsi, Badie, his deputy Rashad Bayoumi, his bureau’s member Mohie Hamed, Saad al-Katatny, and life sentences against 20 other defendants, ordering a retrial.

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On August 12, 2018, Badie and four other Muslim Brotherhood members were handed down life imprisonment in a case known as “al-Bahr al-Azam”.

Badie was sentenced to life in prison in many other cases, including espionage for Hamas, as well as the guidance bureau and Istiqama mosque incidents; however, retrials were ordered in the cases.

Badie was found guilty in the trial of “cutting-off Qalyoubia Road”, in which 36 defendants were also convicted in October 2016. He is still being tried in 11 known cases, mainly over charges of “inciting violence”. However, he stated in a hearing over charges of inciting violence in Minya that he is facing 48 trials, Masrawy reported on Feb. 28.

He was arrested on Aug. 19, 2013, as part of a nation-wide crackdown on Brotherhood leaders in the wake of increasing violence and protests after two Brotherhood sit-ins were dispersed in 2013. The incidents caused the deaths of hundreds of policemen and supporters of the MB-affiliated former president Mohamed Morsi.

Badie, 74, was the eighth leader of the Muslim Brotherhood organization. He became leader of the organization in 2010 after his predecessor Mahdi Akef, who died in 2017.

On April 14, 2018, Egypt the Court of Cassation upheld a life imprisonment sentence against Badie over charges of inciting violence in the “Rabaa operation room case”.

On April 30, 2018, a Cairo criminal court has reordered placing the Muslim Brotherhood organization and 1,529 defendants, including Badie, and Morsi on the terror list.