Former Morsi minister sentenced to 10 years in jail in Egypt

An Egyptian court on Thursday sentenced a former minister to 10 years in jail for offering state television equipment to a satellite channel broadcasting demonstrations backing ousted president Mohamed Morsi.

Salah Abdel Maqsud, who was tried in his absence because he is overseas, was information minister in Morsi's government.

He was sentenced along with another official from state television. The pair were also fined 3.5 million Egyptian pounds ($500,000), a court official said.

Egyptian prosecutors had accused the two men of being responsible for the alleged theft by protesters of two state TV and radio broadcast vehicles in order to air last year's pro-Morsi demonstrations in Cairo's Rabaa and Nahda squares for private satellite television channels.

Survivors of the security forces' deadly dispersal of the protest encampment in August of last year, for their part, say state TV staff abandoned the vehicles during the course of the weeks-long sit-in.

Prosecutors said the state television equipment was later reported stolen, and the court ordered the two defendants to reimburse the government an additional 3.5 million Egyptian pounds.

Egyptian media reports said the equipment was offered to Al-Jazeera television. 

The Egyptian authorities consider the Qatari channel as the mouthpiece of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood movement, accusing it of biased reporting on the President's ouster which came after mass street protests against his one-year rule.

Morsi was overthrown by then army chief and now President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and since then the government has launched a brutal crackdown against his supporters.

At least 1,400 people have been killed and thousands imprisoned.

Morsi and his aides are facing several trials and could face the death sentence if convicted.