An Egyptian court upheld a 20 year jail sentence against Mohamed Morsi

An Egyptian court has upheld a 20-year jail sentence passed against ousted president Mohamed Morsi for his role in the killing of protesters outside the presidential palace in Cairo on Decemmber 2012.

The ruling by the court of Cessation is the first final verdict against Morsi since outing and subsequent detention in July 2013.

He has been convicted and sentenced to death and life imprisonment in three separate cases, but these rulings are under appeal.

In April 2015, a Cairo court had sentenced Morsi to 20 years in prison for inciting violence against protesters who had staged a sit-in outside the presidential palace in December 2012, when he was still in power.

Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, faces charges in other cases including leaking secrets, conspiring with the Palestinian militant group Hamas to destabilise Egypt and organizing a jail break during the 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak.

#News Mohamed Morsi's 20-year prison sentence upheld by Egyptian court https://t.co/evailkr7IZ

— impyer (@impyer) October 22, 2016

Freely elected in June 2012, the Islamist Morsi was ousted a year later by the military, then led by his successor, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who was elected with a landslide in June 2014.