The lawyer of Egypt’s first democratically-elected president, Mohammed Morsi, said that he was laid to rest in Cairo on Tuesday, a day after he collapsed and died during a court session. According to the state TV, the 67-year-old Morsi died of cardiacv arrest.

Rights groups didn’t waste time to call for an independent probe into the detention conditions and resultant death of the Islamist, who was overthrown by the military in 2013, after a year of divisive rule.

One of his lawyers, Abdel Moneim Abdel Maksoud, said: He was buried in Medinat Nasr, in eastern Cairo, with his family present.

Judicial and security sources said that Morsi, also Egypt’s first civilian president, had appeared “animated” during a hearing in a retrial over charges of collaborating with militant groups and foreign powers.

The country’s attorney general’s office said:

The court granted him his request to speak for five minutes… He fell to the ground in the cage… and was transported immediately to the hospital. A medical report found… no pulse or breathing.

He arrived at the hospital dead at 4:50 pm exactly and there were no new, visible injuries found on the body.

In the words of one of Morsi’s legal defence team, Osama El Helw, as the lawyer described to AFP the moment he received news of the ex-president’s death:

We heard the banging on the glass cage from the rest of the other inmates and them screaming loudly that Morsi had died.

Since July 3, 2013, when Morsi was overthrow and sent to jail, his former defence minister, now President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, has been waging a crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood supporters and has jailed thousands of them, with hundreds facing death sentences.

According to a judicial source, Morsi fainted during a trial hearing break.

He told AFP:

The court officials had just finished the session for the espionage case and they informed the judge that he had fainted and needed to be transported to a hospital where he later died.

The last time Morsi was allowed to see his family was in September 2018. One of his sons, Abdallah, was arrested a month later.

Justin Nwosu

Justin Nwosu is the founder and publisher of Flavision. His core interest is in writing unbiased news about Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. He’s a strong adherent of investigative journalism, with a bent on exposing corruption, abuse of power and societal ills.