Egyptian court jails 32 Morsi supporters

An Egyptian court slapped 32 supporters of ousted president Mohamed Morsi with jail terms ranging between 5 and 7 years - including 13 female college students - and acquitted 11 others in three separate trials, a judicial source said on Tuesday.

Fourteen defendants were sentenced to seven years in prison each for allegedly murdering a protester and injuring five others during clashes at the Nile Delta's Zagazig city police station last August, the source said.

Two defendants were acquitted from the charges.

The clashes came in the wake of violent dispersal of two major pro-Morsi sit-ins by security forces in Cairo which left hundreds dead.

In another trial in Zagazig, five students, including Morsi's nephew Mohamed Said, were sentenced to five years in prison each on charges of assaulting university security personnel, the source said.

Nine other students were acquitted from the charges.

In a third trial, 13 female students from Al-Azhar University in Zagazig were sentenced to five years each for an illegal protest on campus in November 2012, five months after Morsi's ouster by the military, the source said.

The female students were tried in absentia, the source said.

Tuesday's verdicts are subject to appeal.

Egypt's army-backed authorities have launched a massive crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood since last July's ouster of Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president and a Muslim Brotherhood leader himself.

Thousands of Brotherhood members have since been arrested on violence-related charges that the group insists are politically driven.

Last December, the Egyptian authorities branded Morsi's Brotherhood a "terrorist group" following a string of attacks on security facilities.

The Brotherhood, for its part, denies any involvement in violence, stressing its commitment to purely peaceful activism.

Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, the former army chief widely seen as the main architect of Morsi's ouster, was elected president in May.