The Minya Criminal Court (in the center of the country) issued a verdict to punish the Brotherhood’s deputy guide (formerly and the current acting guide) Mahmoud Ezzat, whose whereabouts have not been known since the summer of 2013, with life imprisonment in absentia.
The judgment included seven others with life imprisonment, while eight others were sentenced to 5 years imprisonment. The Court also acquitted another in attendance on the charges against them of forming a terrorist cell aimed at overthrowing the government and sabotaging the economy.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s lawyers did not release details about that case. Still, they usually deny those charges and confirm their clients’ adherence to the peaceful opposition in rejecting the current regime. In July 2019, the spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood Talaat Fahmy revealed that Ezzat, the acting guide of the group, was “fine and not correct the news of his death,” after Egyptian pro-regime media announced his death in a hospital outside Egypt.
Ezzat assumed the highest position in the group, on August 20, 2013, following the arrest of the guide, Muhammad Badi, days after the dispersal of the Rab’a Al-Adawiya and Al-Nahda sit-ins in Greater Cairo, after he was deputy guide at the time. Since that time, the group has not announced his whereabouts, his state of health, or how he managed the group, but periodic statements are issued in his name on various occasions.
