CAIRO
Egypt's security forces on Saturday stepped up measures around an eastern Cairo courthouse, where ousted president Mohamed Morsi and 130 others will stand trial on charges of a mass jailbreak during a 2011 uprising that ended the 30-year autocracy of longstanding president Hosni Mubarak.
Policemen can be seen everywhere around the Police Academy, where the trial is being held.
Barbed wires have also been set up around the trial venue with helicopters hovering overhead.
Twenty-two defendants have already arrived at the courthouse, while the ousted president has not yet.
Apart from Morsi, defendants in the case 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 Palestinian resistance group Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah, whose names have not been disclosed.
Also on the list is prominent Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
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.
englishnews@aa.com.tr
