CAIRO -- An Egyptian court on Tuesday struck down a life sentence and ordered the retrial of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi on charges of conspiring with foreign militant groups, including the Palestinian Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip.
The decision by the Court of Cassation in Cairo comes nearly 17 months after the initial sentence against Morsi, who represented the now-banned Muslim Brotherhood.
This is the second time Morsi, 65, has won an appeal. Last week, the same court overturned a death sentence against him in a separate case, one linked to a prison break during the 2011 uprising against Egypt's longtime autocrat and Morsi's predecessor, Hosni Mubarak.
The court on Tuesday, along with Morsi's life sentence, also threw out life sentences for 16 other jailed Brotherhood members, including the group's spiritual leader Mohammed Badei. The court also overturned the death sentences against powerful Brotherhood figure Khairyat el-Shater and 15 others, most of who were tried in absentia.
"The court cases were in tatters," said Mohammed Tosson, one of Morsi's lawyers. "Now the [Court of] Cassation is giving its word and doing its job."
No new date has been set for the retrial.
For the prison break, Morsi had received the only death sentence so far.
Last month, a court upheld a 20-year sentence for Morsi on charges arising from the killing of protesters in December 2012. It was the first final verdict against Morsi, whose was ousted by the military in 2013 after just one year in office.
Since his ouster, Morsi has been in solidarity confinement and has faced several court cases on different charges.
The court rulings come at a time when Egyptian authorities, after banning and declaring the Brotherhood a terrorist organization, continue to crack down on the group's supporters and finances. On Monday, a justice ministry committee ordered the confiscation of assets of over 45 Brotherhood leaders and supporters.
Mohammed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed as a terrorist group, and the court has upheld heavy sentences against its members. But its striking down of some of the faultiest rulings has led lawyers to see the appeals court as a last refuge for justice.
President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and other top officials long have insisted that Egypt's judiciary is independent of the government and does not engage in show trials.
But a series of swift, mass verdicts issued in the tumultuous months after Morsi's ouster, as security forces were cracking down on his supporters and violently dispersing protests, raised the possibility that Egypt might execute the Brotherhood's leadership.
Many judges on the lower courts openly expressed their disdain for the Islamists and their desire to impose order after the turmoil that followed the 2011 uprising. Defense lawyers say they often relied on faulty police reports citing anonymous security sources.
Among the most notorious rulings were those by a court in the southern city of Minya, which sentenced more than 1,000 alleged Morsi supporters to death in two mass trials that each lasted only a few days. Some of those death sentences were later rescinded by a religious authority, and many of the defendants appealed the rulings and were granted retrials. None were executed.
Scores of other cases were reversed by the Court of Cassation, whose members are appointed by the Supreme Judicial Council, a panel of the country's most experienced and well-respected judges.
Rights lawyers see it as a refuge for those who have been tried, convicted and condemned by the lower courts, as well as public opinion.
"The judges of the Court of Cassation have white hands. They are the most honest and the most credible and have no political biases," said Khaled el-Masry, a lawyer who has represented scores of Islamists. "We hope their independence remains untouched."
Gamal Eid, a human-rights lawyer and the founder of the Arabic Network of Human Rights Information, said the rulings "validate our opinion that verdicts have been motivated by political retaliation and not legal evidence."
Egypt's three-year crackdown has decimated his Islamist movement, which triumphed in a series of free elections following the Arab Spring but has now been driven underground. Nearly all the Brotherhood's senior leaders are in jail or living abroad. Thousands of rank-and-file members are imprisoned, while others have left the Brotherhood to join more radical outfits, like the Islamic State group.
The rolling back of harsh verdicts could lay the groundwork for reconciliation, but at the moment there's no evidence the government or the Brotherhood are interested.
In an interview published Saturday by the London-based news portal Arabi 21, Ibrahim Moneir, a senior Brotherhood leader, called for "the wise people" to devise a way of bringing the rival parties together. But he retracted those remarks days later in an interview with a Brotherhood-linked outlet, saying "we haven't asked for reconciliation."
Information for this article was contributed by Mariam Fam of The Associated Press.
A Section on 11/23/2016