Egypt’s ex-president Morsi buried after dramatic courtroom death

Egypt’s former president Mohammed Morsi was buried at dawn in eastern Cairo, his lawyer and family said on Tuesday, a day after he suddenly collapsed during a court session and died.

A member of his defence team, Abdel Moneim Abdel Maksoud, told dpa only 10 of Morsi’s family members, including his sons, wife and three brothers, were allowed to attend the burial.

The burial took place under heavy security.

He said an autopsy was carried out on the body to determine the cause of death.

Morsi’s two sons, Abdullah and Ahmed, said on Twitter that their father was buried near Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leaders in eastern Cairo’s Nasr City district.

They said Egyptian authorities had refused to allow their father to be buried at the family’s cemetery in the Nile Delta province of Sharqiya.

“We washed his noble body at the hospital of Torah prison and read the prayers for him inside the mosque of the prison.

“The burial took place at the grave of Muslim Brotherhood guides in Nasr city,” they added.

Morsi, who hails from the now outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, became Egypt’s first democratically elected leader in 2012 before being deposed in a military coup the following year.

He died on Monday at the age of 67 after he collapsed during a court session in Cairo.

Monday’s session was part of a trial in which he was facing treason charges for allegedly leaking secret state documents to Qatar while he was in office.

The Ministry of Interior declared a state of maximum alert in the country after the announcement.

The state media did not give his death much attention.

They announced his death by mentioning only his name “Mohammed Morsi Al Ayat” and ignoring his title as former Egyptian president.

Morsi’s death also did not make headlines in the front pages of major Egyptian newspapers Tuesday, including private ones.

Only the privately owned Al-Masry Al-Youm daily put it on its front page.

Morsi’s son and the Muslim Brotherhood accused the authorities of killing him.

“They killed him. May God kill them,” his son, Abdullah, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.

READ ALSO: Breaking: Former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi dies in court

The Muslim Brotherhood has accused Egypt’s government of having kept Morsi in solitary confinement for more than five years, restricting medicine and serving him unhealthy food.

“They banned doctors and lawyers from communicating with him and even his family,” the group said in a statement on Monday.

International human rights groups lambasted the Egyptian government over Morsi’s mistreatment while in custody, with Amnesty International calling for a thorough investigation into the death.

Over the past six years, Egypt has launched a crackdown that has seen thousands of people behind bars, mostly accused of involvement in deadly violence or being members of the Brotherhood.

Following Morsi’s ouster, extremist attacks intensified in Egypt, mostly targeting security forces in northern Sinai as well as Christians in the country.

Authorities accuse Muslim Brotherhood members and sympathizers of being affiliated with the jihadists.

The Muslim Brotherhood, headed by Morsi, was formed in 1928 but was only able to form a political party, the Freedom and Justice Party, in 2011.