CAIRO
Ousted elected president Mohamed Morsi still refuses to recognize the legitimacy of several ongoing court trials in which he faces multiple charges, a defense team spokesman said Thursday.
"He doesn't recognize his trial," Mohamed al-Damati told Anadolu Agency. "He insists he is still Egypt's legitimate president."
On Thursday, an Egyptian court set January 28 as the starting date for the trial of Morsi and 130 others charged with illegally breaking out of prison in 2011.
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 Palestinian resistance faction Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, along with prominent Qatar-based Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
A second trial, in which Morsi – Egypt's first freely-elected civilian president – is charged with inciting the murder of demonstrators last year, is set to resume on January 8.
In a first trial session on November 4, Morsi had refused to recognize the trial's legitimacy and rejected any formal legal representation.
January 28 will mark the third anniversary of Egypt's so-called "Friday of Anger," when police withdrew from streets countrywide amid a popular revolt that ousted long-serving president Hosni Mubarak in early 2011.
"President Morsi, who was arrested by the Mubarak regime on the eve of the 'Friday of Anger,' will now be tried on the same day," Morsi's son Osama, a lawyer by profession, told AA.
He sees the trial's opening date as a "message from the coup leaders that all the gains of the January [2011] revolution have been reversed."
A defiant Osama, however, stressed that his father's trial "will not break the will and steadfastness of the revolutionaries."
Morsi's supporters insist that the charges leveled against the ousted and imprisoned president are politically motivated.
By Islam Mosaad
