International rights watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused the Egyptian authorities of carrying out an unfair trial against former Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, in a statement it published on Sunday.
The trial was "compromised by due process violations, the appearance of bias and an absence of conclusive evidence," the statement said.
In the first verdict against the ex-president who is on trial in four separate cases, Morsi and another 14 defendants were sentenced last week to 20 years in prison for inciting violence that led to the death of ten people during clashes outside the Ittihadiya presidential palace in December 2012.
HRW said Morsi was convicted on the basis of "little evidence" other than the testimony of senior security officers who testified to his "complicity in the unlawful detention, torture, and intimidation of protesters carried out by top aides and Muslim Brotherhood supporters."
"A review of an 80-page summary of the prosecution’s case showed that the allegations against Morsi relied primarily on the testimony of Maj. Gen. Mohamed Zaki, the commander of the Republican Guard, a division of the army tasked with protecting the presidency. Zaki testified that there “must have been” an agreement between Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to disperse anti-government protesters by force but gave no evidence to support his hypothesis," a HRW statement read.
HRW also criticised the lead up to the trial, saying that Morsi and some of his aides weren't granted the right to regular consultations with their lawyers, according to a statement by defence team members to the rights organisation.
HRW also criticised the fact that Morsi was being held inside a soundproof glass barrier. The statement said that this violated the defendants' "due process rights because it prevented lawyers from speaking to their clients and sometimes prevented the defendants from hearing the judge."
The statement did however include the opinion of an Egyptian rights lawyer, Mohamed Abdel-Aziz, who said that the NGO he works for observed no major flaws in the trial, unlike in other Brotherhood trials.
HRW also observed that the prosecution failed to mention "the deaths of Brotherhood supporters" in their investigation. The Brotherhood has claimed the majority of the dead in the Ittihadeya clashes were among their own ranks.
HRW said only three of the 10 people killed that day "were included in the prosecutors’ file, creating an appearance that the case was politically motivated against the Brotherhood."
After a breakdown of the events that unfolded that day and the testimonies documented in the prosecutions summary, the statement concluded by stating that "Morsi’s ties to those who called for confrontations do not amount to evidence of his criminal guilt, and prosecutors did not present evidence that he was complicit in decisions by his aides or party colleagues to send supporters to confront opposition protesters."
The trial was also heavily criticised by Amnesty International, who – in a strongly worded statement – said the trial proves that the Egyptian judiciary is not independent and called for a retrial.
