Mohammed Morsi, the first democratically elected president of Egypt, collapsed in court and died on Monday while facing trial. Mohammed Morsi who was ousted by the military in 2013 after a year in office.
According to the reports, the 67-year-old Morsi had just addressed the court, speaking from the glass cage, where he was locked during court sessions and had warned that he had “many secrets” he could reveal. Within minutes of that, Morsi collapsed in the cage.
The 67-year-old Morsi was in court for a hearing on charges of espionage emanating from suspected contacts with the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. Morsi was serving a 20-year prison sentence for a conviction after he was convicted for killing protesters during demonstrations in 2012 and a life sentence for espionage in a case related to the Gulf state of Qatar.
According to one of the defence lawyers, Kamel Madour, Morsi continued to insist that he was Egypt’s legitimate president and was demanding a special tribunal to decide his conviction.
As news of his death spread, a group of Morsi’s supporters and human rights groups raised questions about his treatment in prison. The former president was known to have been suffering from several ailments, including diabetes and liver disease.
Last year, a panel of British politicians and lawyers had concluded that Morsi had received “inadequate medical care” and found that the conditions of detention could meet the threshold for “torture.”
Morsi was also put in solitary confinement and was barred from visitors his family, who were allowed to visit only three times during that time.
The chief prosecutor of Egypt has said Morsi’s body would be examined to determine the cause of his death. However, the state TV has said he died after suffering a heart attack.
Mohammed Morsi, with the backing of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s most powerful Islamist group, won the 2012 presidential elections the country, the first free elections the country had ever seen. He was unseated on 3 July by a military coup council led by the then Defense Minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
