Egypt's former President Mohamed Morsy given death sentence in jailbreak case

Ousted former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy was sentenced to death Saturday in a Cairo court. He had been convicted in a 2011 prison break.

Morsy's name will be passed to the Grand Mufti, along with those of more than 100 other defendants, for the confirmation of the death sentence on June 2. The Grand Mufti is the highest legal authority in Egypt. This was the harshest sentence that Morsy could have expected to receive in the case. He will be able to appeal the sentence. The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Badie, and a former parliament speaker, Mohamed Saad El-Katatny, were also referred to the Grand Mufti in the jailbreak case. Cairo's military-installed government has banned the Muslim Brotherhood, branding it a terrorist group -- an allegation it denies. Morsy and his co-defendants were accused of collaborating with the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas and the Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah to break into several prisons across Egypt in January 2011 and facilitating the escape of Morsy and 20,000 others.

In a separate case involving espionage charges, another 16 defendants -- but not Morsy -- were also sentenced to death Saturday. Morsy, who became Egypt's first democratically elected President in June 2012, was deposed by a popularly backed military coup in July 2013. The ousted President was already convicted in April this year on charges of violence and inciting violence and sentenced to 20 years in prison for the torture of protesters outside the presidential palace in December 2012. But he was acquitted of murder in the deaths of protesters.

-CNN