The First Terrorism Circuit at Badr Court sentenced 37 defendants to life imprisonment Tuesday, 26 defendants to 15 years’ hard labor, and five defendants to 10 years in prison, after convicting them of “espionage, joining a terrorist group, routing international calls without a license, and possessing communication devices without a permit,” in the case known in the media as “Espionage for Turkey.”
Dating back to 2017, the case involved senior figures in the Muslim Brotherhood, a leading opposition force against the Egyptian government at the time. The prosecution alleged that the Brotherhood was working with Turkish security to undermine the Egyptian state and take power.
The court ordered 29 defendants to pay compensation of over 7 billion Egyptian pounds (about $130 million) to the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority. It also placed 15 defendants under police observation for five years and prohibited the defendant Ali Ibrahim Ali from residing in border governorates for the same duration.
According to a statement by the Egyptian Front for Human Rights (EFHR), the ruling included sentencing one defendant to three years in prison with an equivalent period under police observation and two defendants to one year in prison. The court acquitted one defendant.
The court further ruled the case inadmissible against Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie, his deputy Khairat Al-Shater, and acting guide Mahmoud Ezzat due to prior adjudication, while the criminal case against Ibrahim Munir and Mahmoud Mohammed Mahmoud was terminated following their deaths.
By its ruling, the court also added five defendants and a number of entities to the terrorist entities list, including the “Muslim Brotherhood group, the Parallel Egyptian Parliament, the Egyptian Revolutionary Council, the Rabaa Egyptian Solidarity Association, and the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey.”
According to EFHR, the facts of the case date back to October 2017 and involved 81 defendants, including 36 in custody and 47 tried in absentia. A number of them remained in pretrial detention for more than four years before being referred to trial on November 17, 2021, with the verdict being issued after nearly 8 years of detention and trial.
Since the beginning of 2022, the case witnessed a series of procedural sessions and postponements. The court banned press coverage and photography, rejected defense requests to visit defendants who were completely isolated from their families and lawyers, and excluded national security investigations and encrypted messages from the case files available to the defense, according to the Committee for Justice.
Notably in July 2022, the Court summoned the head of the National Security Service at the time, Major General Abbas Kamel, for questioning. Throughout 2023 and 2024 the case was repeatedly postponed, for reasons that varied between the inability to bring the defendants, the absence of lawyers, and administrative grounds.
The prosecution charged the defendants, most notably Brotherhood leader Mahmoud Ezzat, with accusations including “espionage with a foreign entity, joining a terrorist group and holding a leadership position in it, in addition to routing international calls without a license, and possessing communication devices without a permit,” according to EFHR.
EFHR relayed defense testimonies of violations against a number of detainees, including the enforced disappearance of defendant Somaya Maher and 28 others for one year.
These testimonies also included the detention of a number of defendants in inhumane conditions, including narrow, poorly ventilated cells, a lack of food and health care, and the prevention of visits and exercise, as well as appearing before investigative authorities bound inside soundproof glass cages, which hindered their communication with their lawyers.
