The Cairo Criminal Court postponed to Thursday the ongoing trial against former president Mohamed Morsi and 10 other defendants, to listen to the testimony of current Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Lieutenant General Mahmoud Hegazy.
Hegazy is also the current Vice President of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and was the former Head of Military Intelligence.
The session was postponed as Morsi was unable to attend due to unfavourable weather conditions.
In Tuesday’s session, former Chief of the Republican Guard Mohamed Zaki testified that the documents included as evidence in the case had been presented to the former president, but had not been returned in order to be archived. The documents are “top secret” military files.
Zaki explained that all documents belonging to the Armed Forces are first delivered to the office of the Chief of the Republican Guard to be registered in the archive and then presented to the president to be ratified, before being returned to the archive once again.
A week earlier, former interior minister Mohamed Ibrahim testified in front of the court, accusing the Muslim Brotherhood of leaking general and military documents to Qatari intelligence and Qatari-satellite news channel Al Jazeera.
Ibrahim referred to the Muslim Brotherhood as the group that held control over the presidency during Morsi’s tenure.
The court scheduled trial sessions to listen to witnesses until 10 September. The list of witnesses includes Ibrahim, along with former head of the president’s office Mostafa Tala’at, and former chief of the Republican Guard Mohamed Zaki.
The defendants are accused of leaking important national security documents and information on the Egyptian army to Qatar during Morsi’s year-long tenure, ending in July 2013.
In September 2014, late prosecutor general Hisham Barakat had referred the defendants to criminal court on charges of illegally obtaining copies of intelligence reports, and confidential reports on the armed forces’ plans. They were also accused of intending to deliver the documents to the Qatari satellite network, Al Jazeera.
Morsi received his first prison sentence in the Presidential Palace Clashes case, where he was handed 20 years for inciting and demonstrating violence.
He also received both a death sentence and a life sentence in the Hamas espionage trial and the Prison Break trial, respectively.
