Cairo: An Egyptian court on Wednesday handed down firebrand Islamist preacher Hazem Salah Abu Esmail seven years in prison on fraud charges, judicial sources said.
The ruling comes three days after the same court sentenced him to one year in prison for insulting the judges during the trial.
Since the trial opened in November last year, Abu Esmail, a lawyer by profession and the leader of the Salafist Banner Party, has refused to recognise the court’s authority.
The trial is related to charges that he had forged an official document on his mother’s nationality during his short-lived bid to run for Egypt’s presidency in 2012.
He was disqualified from the race after the Interior Ministry said his dead mother was a US, not Egyptian citizen as he stated in the candidacy application.
Under the Egyptian constitution, a presidential candidate and his or her parents should be Egyptian citizens only.
Wednesday’s verdict was announced amid tight security at a makeshift courtroom in a police building near the Tura Prison in southern Cairo.
Abu Esmail, 52, used to give sermons on Islamist TV channels and in a mosque in the Cairo quarter of Dokki. His public rallies drew many Salafist devotees.
He was arrested two days after the military unseated Islamist president Mohammad Mursi on July 3 last year following enormous street protests against his one-year rule. Hundreds of Islamists have since been rounded up in Egypt.
