Top Muslim Brotherhood leader sentenced to life in prison

An Egyptian court sentenced Mohamed Badie, the Supreme Guide of the banned Muslim Brotherhood group, to life in prison over a violent 2013 incident, state-media reported.

Along with Badie on Saturday, Mohamed El-Beltagy, Safwat Hegazi, and nine others of the group's leaders were sentenced to life in prison in a retrial over a police station incident in the coastal Port Said province that followed the ouster of late President Mohamed Morsi, Xinhua news agency quoted the state-run Ahram Online as saying.

The retrial comes after the Court of Cassation in 2017 cancelled the previous jail sentences against the defendants and ordered their retrial, Ahram Online added.

The prosecution charged the defendants with the murder of five people, the attempted murder of 70 others, vandalizing public and private property, the theft of ammunition and weaponry from Port Said's El-Arab police station, and inciting violence and chaos.

The sentence is not final and can still be challenged in front of the Court of Cassation, according to Ahram Online.

Life imprisonment is 25 years in prison according to Egyptian law.

Badie, the Muslim Brotherhood's elected eighth chief in 2010, was handed a death sentence in another case for ordering the murder of 10 people in Cairo in 2013.

He also received life imprisonment verdicts in violence-related charges, totaling over 100 years.

In August 2015, Badie and 94 other Muslim Brotherhood leaders were sentenced to life imprisonment by the Port Said Criminal Court, of whom 19 were sentenced in absentia, with a further 76 on the run as fugitives.

An additional 28 others were sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in the same trial, with a total of 68 defendants acquitted of the charges..