By Andrew Irumba
Cairo Egypt:Former Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi has died after he fainted during a court trial and was rushed to the hospital but was later pronounced dead!
Morsi has died at the age of 67.
One of the top members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and the leader of the Freedom and Justice Party ruled the country between June 2012 and July 2013.
“He was speaking before the judge for 20 minutes then became very animated and fainted. He was quickly rushed to the hospital where he later died”, one of the sources in court told AFP.
The incident happened during the adjournment of the court session. The cause of death remains unknown.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan paid tribute to ‘martyr’ Morsi on the news of the former Egyptian president’s death.
The criminal court was reviewing espionage charges against Morsi and 23 other Muslim Brotherhood members, when the former Egyptian president collapsed.
Morsi was overthrown following mass protests a year after he took office as the country’s first democratically elected leader. He had remained in custody since then.
After his removal from power, Egyptian authorities launched a crackdown on his supporters and the Muslim Brotherhood.
The hearing in the capital, Cairo, was related to charges of espionage emanating from suspected contacts with the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, according to state television.
Who Was Morsi?
Morsi was born in the village of El-Adwah in the Nile Delta province of Sharqiya in 1951. He studied Engineering at Cairo University in the 1970s before moving to the US to complete a PhD.
He was chosen as the Muslim Brotherhood’s presidential candidate for the 2012 election after the movement’s preferred choice was forced to pull out. After a narrow victory, he promised to head a government “for all Egyptians”.
But critics complained he had failed to deliver during his turbulent year in office. They accused him of allowing Islamists to monopolize the political scene and mishandling the economy.
Public opposition to his government grew and millions of anti-government protesters took to the streets across Egypt to mark the first anniversary of the day he took office, on 30 June 2013.
On the evening of 3 July, the army suspended the constitution and announced the formation of a technocratic interim government ahead of new presidential elections. Morsi, who denounced the announcement as a coup, was taken into custody by the army.
