CAIRO
Ousted President Mohamed Morsi and 129 others, including members of Palestinian group Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah movement, were referred to court on Saturday to face jailbreak charges.
The defendants include Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide, Mohamed Badie, his deputy Mahmoud Ezzat, former parliament speaker Saad al-Katatni and senior group members Mohamed al-Beltagi, Essam Erian and Saad al-Husseini, according to a statement issued by investigating judge Hassan Samir.
The list also includes members of Hamas and Hezbollah, whose names have not been disclosed.
Judicial sources said that prominent scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi is also on the list.
According to the statement, 800 foreign operatives had crossed the border into Egypt's Sinai via underground tunnels along the border with the Gaza Strip during the January 2011 revolution, which ousted longstanding president Hosni Mubarak.
The statement said the operatives had attacked police and government facilities in Sinai, leaving several policemen dead, before moving to Wadi Natrun and Abu Zaabal prisons in northern Cairo and broke into them.
The statement went to say that the attackers had killed more than 50 policemen and prisoners before they helped their associates to escape along with more than 20,000 other inmates.
"They abducted three police officers and a non-commissioned officer and took them to Gaza," investigating judge Samir said.
But a source in Morsi's defense team said the charges against the ousted president – like those brought up against other Muslim Brotherhood leaders and Islamist figures – are politically motivated.
He said that the case had been put on shelves following the anti-Mubarak uprising in 2011 because of the lack of the necessary documents.
englishnews@aa.com.tr
