Egyptian secular activist jailed for 3 years for insulting court

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An Egyptian court sentenced on Tuesday prominent secular political activist Ahmed Douma to three years in prison for describing his trial over violence charges as politicized, official news agency MENA reported.

Head of Giza Criminal Court, Judge Mohamed Nagi Shehata, delivered the sentence after a heated discussion with Douma, who was on trial over charges of participating in deadly clashes with police forces in 2011.

Douma, together with 268 other defendants, is accused of clashing with security forces that dispersed a sit-in he organized against the then military rule back in 2011.

Violence left at least three dead and more than 250 people wounded.

Meanwhile, the court adjourned Tuesday's trial to February 4, 2015.

Douma, a prominent youth activist and blogger, was arrested under every consecutive Egyptian government in recent years for his pro-democracy stances.

He was one of the upstanding critics of former President Hosni Mubarak's regime and was a leading figure during the protests that unseated him in January 2011.

The young man also mobilized national protests that toppled Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July last year.

He was arrested in December 2013 following a rally organized by an anti-army campaign in defiance of a new restrictive protest law.

On December 22, 2013, he was sentenced to three years in prison, alongside two other famous secular activists, and fined 50,000 Egyptian pound (around 7,000 U.S. dollars) for his participation in pro-democracy protests illegal under the new protest law.

Tuesday's verdict came days after another Egyptian court cleared Mubarak, seen by many Egyptians as a dictatorship, over killing hundreds of protestors during the 2011 revolution that toppled him.

The Egyptian judiciary is criticized by many international human rights organizations and local opposition groups of politicizing its rulings in favor of the current pro-army regime. However, the government says it has no influence over Egypt's justice system.

Many of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood members and secular activists are in prison awaiting trials relating to inciting violence, conspiring with foreign powers to destabilize Egypt and killing protestors, some of which carry the death penalty.

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