(AFP PHOTO / TAREK EL-GABASS)
The Cairo Criminal Court sentenced Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) leader Mohamed Al-Beltagy and Islamist preacher Safwat Hegazy to 15 years imprisonment with hard labour on Saturday.
The pair were found guilty of torturing and sexually assaulting a lawyer during the 2011 uprising against former president Hosni Mubarak.
Al-Jazeera broadcaster Ahmed Mansour and former Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated MP Hazem Farouk, who are accused alongside Hegazy and Al-Beltagy, were also sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment.
The court also sentenced former youth minister Osama Yassin, head of the legislative committee of the dissolved parliament Mahmoud Al-Khodeiry, and former Brotherhood- affiliated MPs Mohsen Rady and Amr Zaki to three years imprisonment.
The prosecutor general referred them to trial in November 2013 for the incident, said to have occurred on 3 February 2011 in the office of a tourism company in Tahrir Square.
Al-Beltagy and Hegazy were sentenced to 20 years in jail for torture and leading a terrorist group on 9 September. They were also sentenced to ten years on charges of kidnapping and torturing two policemen at the Rabaa Al-Adaweya sit-in in August 2013. The pair received an additional ten years for “being in command of a terrorist group”, while two others, doctors at the sit-in’s field hospital, received five years for joining a terrorist group.
