CAIRO: Egypt’s ousted President Muhammad Mursi faces a new espionage trial on Feb. 15 for allegedly leaking “classified documents” to Qatar and Al-Jazeera television, a judicial source said Monday.
Mursi, ousted in July 2013 by the army, is already facing three other trials, including another case of alleged espionage, and could face the death penalty if ruled guilty.
In the new espionage trial, Mursi and nine others including an Al-Jazeera employee are accused of “handing over to Qatari intelligence documents linked to national security in exchange for one million dollars,” a prosecution statement said.
It said the case against the suspects, of whom seven are in custody, represented “the biggest act of treason and espionage” ever carried out against Egypt.
Mursi is already on trial in three separate cases — one for the killing of protesters during his presidency, another for allegedly conspiring with foreign powers including Iran to destabilize Egypt, and a third over a jailbreak and attacks on police stations during the 2011 uprising that ousted president Hosni Mubarak.
Qatar, where the broadcaster Al-Jazeera is based, had always supported Mursi and his Muslim Brotherhood, which posted strong electoral gains after Mubarak’s ouster.
In the latest trial, Mursi’s codefendants include: his former secretary, Amin El-Serafi, the ex-director of his office, Ahmed Abdel Atti, and Ibrahim Mohamed Helal, identified as a chief editor of Al-Jazeera television. Mursi and Abdel Atti gave El-Serafi “extremely sensitive documents concerning the army, its deployment and weaponry,” and he passed on them to Helal and a Qatari intelligence operative, according to the prosecution.
It said unidentified intermediaries were used to send the documents to Helal and the Qataris.
The papers included documents from the “general and military intelligence offices of the state security” apparatus, the prosecutor said.
New Mursi espionage trial on Feb. 15
