Egypt on Thursday sentenced Mahmud Ezzat, the 76-year-old top leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, to life imprisonment after he was found guilty of "terrorism", AFP reported, citing the state-run Al-Ahram newspaper.
"The Cairo Criminal Court on Thursday sentenced Mahmoud Ezzat, the acting supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood designated as a terrorist, to life for murder and terrorism charges," according to the newspaper.
Ezzat was arrested in August 2020 in Cairo, after being on the run for several years.
He was found guilty of "incitement to murder" and of having "supplied weapons" during clashes between demonstrators outside the headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013, said a judicial source, who also confirmed the sentence.
The Muslim Brotherhood was outlawed and designated a terrorist organization in Egypt in December 2013, several months after the ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi, a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood, following mass protests against his rule.
Since Morsi’s ouster, Egyptian authorities have launched a crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters. As part of the crackdown, thousands of Brotherhood supporters have been jailed and the group was blacklisted as a terrorist organization.
In 2018, Egypt passed a law to oversee the freezing of assets of “terrorists” and “terrorist groups”.
Following the approval of that law, the assets of more than 1,000 charities tied to the Muslim Brotherhood were frozen.
(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)