CAIRO: An Egyptian court sentenced deposed President Muhammad Mursi to death on Tuesday over a mass jail break during the country’s 2011 uprising and issued sweeping punishments against the leadership of Egypt’s oldest Islamic group.

The general guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Badie, and four other Brotherhood leaders were also handed the death penalty. More than 90 others, including influential scholar Yusuf Qaradawi, were sentenced to death in absentia.

The Brotherhood described the rulings as “null and void” and called for a popular uprising on Friday.

The sentences were part of a crackdown launched after an army takeover stripped Mursi of power in 2013 following mass protests against his rule.

Judge Shaaban El-Shami, said the Grand Mufti had said in his opinion that the death sentence was permissible for the defendants who had been referred to him.

Wearing his blue prison suit, the bespectacled and bearded Mursi listened calmly as Shami read out the verdict in the case relating to the 2011 mass jail break, in which Mursi faced charges of killing, kidnapping and other offenses.

Shami had earlier given Mursi a 25-year sentence in a case relating to conspiring with foreign groups.

Mursi appeared unfazed, smiling, and waving to lawyers as other defendants chanted: “Down, down with military rule,” after the verdicts, which can be appealed, were read out at the court session in the Police Academy.

The rulings mark yet another setback for leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, and increase the chances of its youth taking up arms against the authorities, breaking what the group says is a long tradition of non-violence.

The court last month convicted Mursi and his fellow defendants of killing and kidnapping policemen, attacking police facilities and breaking out of jail during the 2011 uprising.

The death sentence request had drawn criticism from Western governments, including Washington, and human rights groups. “This verdict is a nail in the coffin of democracy in Egypt,” Yahya Hamid, a former minister and head of international relations for the Brotherhood, said.

Western diplomats say Egyptian officials have acknowledged that executing Mursi would risk turning him into a martyr. The Brotherhood, the Middle East’s oldest group, has survived decades of repression, maintaining popular support through its charities.

The death sentences “signals the Egyptian state as rejecting de-escalation in the crackdown against the Brotherhood,” said H.A. Hellyer of the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Mursi, Badie and 15 others were given 25 year jail sentences — for conspiring with Palestinian group Hamas, which rules Gaza. They included senior Brotherhood figures Essam el-Erian and Saad el-Katatni.