CAIRO: A television channel chief and presenter denied calling for the murder of President Muhammad Mursi when his trial on incitement charges opened in the Egyptian capital yesterday.

“I merely criticized President Mursi,” Tawfiq Okasha told judges at the court appearance, an AFP journalist reported.

“This is a political trial. The Muslim Brotherhood wants to silence all dissent and reproduce the system from before the revolution,” he said.

Okasha added that he was in the dock for “revealing the Brotherhood’s involvement in attacks on police stations, courts and prisons during the revolution” in 2011.

Okasha’s Al-Faraeen channel, suspended on Aug. 16, aired a show that was stridently anti-Mursi and anti-Muslim Brotherhood, the party from which the leader emanates.

The charges against him came at the same time that Islam Afifi, the editor of small independent newspaper Al-Dustour, was accused of spreading false news and inciting disorder.

Okasha arrived at court surrounded by his supporters who chanted “The people want Al-Faraeen!“

The court set the next session of the trial for Oct. 3 after hearing the case for the defense, which argued that the complaints against Okasha were not filed by Mursi personally.

Both Okasha and Afifi were banned from leaving the country in August.

Afifi was freed after spending several hours in custody on the day of his trial, after a decree signed by Mursi scrapped preventive detention for alleged publishing crimes.