Egyptian media is reporting that an Egyptian court has acquitted the former leader of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood on charges that he insulted the judiciary. According to an Ahram Online report:
Mohammed Mahdi Akef
May 14, 2014 A court in Cairo has acquitted the former supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood on charges that he insulted the judiciary. Mahdy Akef said Egyptian judges were ‘corrupt’ during an interview with Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida in April 2013.
Akef, who was arrested a day after Mohamed Morsi’s ouster on 3 July 2013, also faces separate trials for inciting the killing of protesters at the Brotherhood’s headquarters in Cairo during anti-Morsi protests on 30 June 2013, and during clashes in Manial.
The 86-year-old was sent to Maadi military hospital, where ousted president Hosni Mubarak resides, following a deterioration in his health.
He served as the Islamist group’s supreme guide between 2004 and 2010.
He was succeeded by Mohamed Badie, who was sentenced to death along with 682 others for attacking a police station and killing an officer in violence that followed the bloody dispersal of pro-Morsi protest camps in August 2013.
Mohammed Mahdi Akef , who was resident in Germany during the 1980’s, is famous for his incendiary rhetoric including numerous anti-American, anti-Semitic, and other remarks. For example, in November 2007 Akef denied the existence of Al Qaeda calling the organization an “American invention” while attributing Islamic sectarian violence to “American Zionist tricks.” As noted in the above report, he was replaced in January 2012 as Brotherhood Supreme Guide by Mohamed Badie who was recently sentenced to death by an Egyptian court.
