Mursi sold state secrets to Qatar for $1 million

Egypt charges Mursi with selling state secrets to Qatar for $1 million

Egypt's deposed Islamist president Mohammed Mursi, charged along with 130 others of plotting attacks and escaping from prison in 2011, sits inside the defendant’s cage during his trial at the police academy in Cairo on August 18, 2014. (Photo: AFP)

Published Saturday, September 6, 2014

Egypt's deposed president Mohammed Mursi will be tried on charges of selling Qatar documents relating to national security, the state prosecutor said on Saturday.

The Islamist ex-president is already facing the death penalty in several trials, and his supporters have been the target of a deadly crackdown by authorities since his ouster in July 2013.

No date has yet been set for the new trial facing Mursi, who is suspected of providing the sensitive documents to the energy-rich Gulf state during his single year of turbulent rule.

Mursi will go on trial for having "handed over to Qatari intelligence documents linked to national security... in exchange for one million dollars," the prosecutor said in a statement.

Ten other defendants will be tried alongside Mursi, including his former secretary Amin al-Serafi and Ibrahim Mohammed Helal, whom the prosecutor said was chief editor of the Doha-based Al Jazeera satellite television network.

In the statement, the prosecutor said the documents supplied to Qatar were given to "top heads from Al Jazeera."

The interior ministry in March accused Serafi of handing over documents regarding the army, its weaponry and troop deployments to an Al Jazeera chief editor and member of Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood.

The movement was designated as a terrorist group after Mursi's overthrow on July 3, 2013.

Relations between Egypt and Qatar soured after Mursi's ouster, as Cairo criticized Doha's backing for the Brotherhood.

Qatar has denounced Egypt's crackdown on Mursi supporters which has left more than 1,400 people dead since his ouster.

Thousands more have been detained and imprisoned, and hundreds have been sentenced to death in speedy mass trials.

Mursi is already on trial in three separate cases -- one over the killing of protesters during his presidency, another for allegedly conspiring with foreign powers including Iran to destabilize Egypt, and a third over a jailbreak during the 2011 uprising that ousted strongman Hosni Mubarak.

Mursi could face the death penalty if convicted.

Egypt has also jailed Al Jazeera journalists on charges of helping the Brotherhood, triggering an international outcry.

(AFP)