The United States expressed alarm today at death sentences for Egypt's ousted president Mohamed Morsi and dozens of others, a verdict experts called a declaration of "total war" on his Muslim Brotherhood.
Morsi was among more than 100 defendants ordered by a court yesterday to face the death penalty for their role in a mass jailbreak during the 2011 uprising.
He ruled for only a year before mass protests spurred then-army chief and now President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to overthrow him in July 2013.
Sisi won a presidential election in May 2014 backed by Egyptians tired of political turmoil in the world's most populous Arab nation following the 2011 revolt against longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
Washington expressed concern over yesterday's verdict, saying it has "consistently spoken out against the practice of mass trials and sentences".
"We continue to stress the need for due process and individualised judicial processes for all Egyptians in the interests of justice," a State Department official said.
A government crackdown under Sisi has seen hundreds of Morsi's Islamist supporters killed, thousands jailed and dozens sentenced to death after mass trials which the United Nations has described as "unprecedented in recent history".
Ties between Washington and Cairo plummeted after Morsi's ouster, with President Barack Obama's administration freezing annual military aid of USD 1.3 billion to Cairo.
Most of the aid was unblocked in late 2014.
The foreign ministry denounced global condemnation of the verdict, saying "such comments constitute unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of the country".
Judge Shabaan El-Shamy convicted Morsi, already sentenced to 20 years in jail in another trial, and dozens of other co-defendants including prominent Qatar-based cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, of plotting jailbreaks and attacks on police during the 2011 revolt.
Many of the defendants were Palestinians alleged to have worked with Hamas in neighbouring Gaza, and were tried in absentia.
The death sentences "have no value and cannot be implemented because they are against the rule of God and people's laws and customs", Qaradawi told the Doha-based Al-Jazeera news channel.
