Ousted Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi and 25 public figures were on Sunday referred to criminal court over charges of "insulting" the judiciary.
The referral order included prominent activists Alaa Abdel-Fattah, currently in jail over staging unlicensed protest, former MP Amr Hamzawi, and former legislator Mustafa al-Nagar.
The list also includes prominent political activist Abdel-Rahman Youssef al-Qaradawi, former judge Noha a-Zeini and former judge and lawmaker Mahmoud al-Khodeiri.
Several leaders of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood group and Islamists are also facing the same charges.
The prosecution accused the defendants of "insulting the judiciary and interfering in the course of justice."
Mohamed al-Damati, a spokesman for lawyers representing defendants in another Morsi trial, insisted that the charges were "politically motivated."
"This is a continuation of the policy to drag judiciary into politics," he told Anadolu Agency.
Egyptian authorities have unleashed a massive crackdown on pro-Morsi figures since the bloody August 14 dispersal of two sit-ins staged by his supporters in which hundreds of protesters were killed.
Morsi – Egypt's first freely-elected president, who was ousted by the army last July after only one year in office – is due to appear in court next month on charges of inciting the murder of opposition protesters outside Cairo's Ittihadiya presidential palace in late 2012.
He had also been referred to criminal court to answer charges of "conspiring" with Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah to carry out a "terrorist plot" inside Egypt.
Morsi also faces trial over charges he had helped prisoners – including himself – break out of jail during Egypt's 2011 revolution, sabotaging public property and abducting security personnel.
Morsi refuses to recognize the legitimacy of his trials and sees himself as the legitimate president of Egypt.
By Walid Fouda
englishnews@aa.com.tr
