Egypt's former president Mohamed Morsi sentenced to 20 years in prison

Elected president the year after Egypt's 2011 revolution, Morsi was removed by the military in 2013 after an acrimonious year in office. Tuesday's verdict stemmed from deaths during violent clashes between Muslim Brotherhood supporters and protesters who opposed Morsi in December 2012, Kazinform refers to the Guardian. The verdict and sentence were issued during a brief hearing in a crowded courtroom in a police academy on the outskirts of Cairo. The defendants in the case included several senior leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. The prisoners appeared inside a metal and glass cage inside the courtroom, dressed in white and blue jumpsuits. Throughout the short proceedings, they held aloft the four-fingered signal used by Islamists to commemorate the 2013 killings of hundreds of Morsi's supporters in Cairo's Rabaa Al-Adawiya Square. Those deaths took place in the context of a clampdown on Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood group in the weeks following the military takeover. An appeal against Tuesday's verdict is expected. Morsi is also on trial in two other cases, one for escaping prison during the 2011 popular uprising, another for espionage. Verdicts in the two other trials are expected in May. Morsi is held at a high-security prison near the Mediterranean city of Alexandria. His incarceration there followed four months of detention at an undisclosed location. In past sessions, Morsi and most of the defendants turned their backs to the court when Youssef played video recordings of the clashes outside the palace in 2012.