Cairo: An Egyptian court Thursday sentenced former information minister, Salah Abdul Maqsud, who served in the government of the now-toppled Islamist president Mohammad Mursi, to 10 years in prison on charges of wasting public money by misusing transmission equipment, the latest verdict against Islamists.
The Cairo Criminal Court also ordered Abdul Maqsud, who was tried in absentia, and an ex-TV official to pay together a fine of 3.6 million Egyptian pounds (around Dh 1.89 million) in the same case.
Abdul Maqsud, a senior official in Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood, was charged with illegally allocating a transmission vehicle owned by state Egyptian TV, to cover a pro-Mursi sit-in that was held in Cairo last year in the run-up to street protests demanding the Islamist leader’s ouster.
The rally lasted for more than a month and was eventually cleared in a deadly security clampdown.
Abdul Maqsud is believed to have fled to Qatar or Turkey in the wake of the army’s overthrow of Mursi in mid-2013.
Mursi is being tried on multiple charges ranging from spying to incitement to protester deaths.
Dozens of Brotherhood leaders have been put on trial and given varying jail terms in recent months on charges of inciting or involvement in violence. The Brotherhood, designated by Egyptian authorities as a terrorist organization, has repeatedly condemned the trials as unfair and politically motivated.
