DHAKA: The Muslim Brotherhood denounced the Egyptian authorities on Thursday for charging former president Mohamed Mursi and other Islamists with terrorism and conspiring with foreign groups, saying the allegations were ‘risible’.

The Brotherhood also reiterated calls for all nations to put pressure on Egypt to free Mursi a day after the public prosecutor ordered him and 35 other top Brotherhood leaders to stand trial on charges that could result in the death penalty.

The prosecutor declared it ‘the biggest case of conspiracy in the history of Egypt’, detailing a ‘terrorist plan’ dating back to 2005 that implicated the Palestinian group Hamas, Iran’s Shia Islamist government its Lebanese ally Hezbollah.

In a statement released from London and received in the early hours of Thursday, the Brotherhood rejected the charges as a ‘new episode of the military coup’s crimes against the Egyptian people’, reports The Jerusalem Post.

BDST: 1914 HRS, DEC 19, 2013
Edited by Robab Rosan, Current Affairs Editor