An Egyptian court has sentenced 14 people, including an adviser to an ousted Islamist president, to life in prison for membership in the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.
The state-run Al Ahram news website reported on Thursday that out of the 14, eight were sentenced in absentia.
Thursday's verdict by the Cairo Criminal Court included 15-year-sentences that were handed down to six other defendants while one person was sentenced to 10 years. The verdicts can be appealed.
Along with Brotherhood membership, charges included possessing firearms, violating citizens' personal freedoms and disrupting constitutional provisions.
Egypt has cracked down severely on Islamists since the 2013 ouster of the country's first freely elected civilian President Mohamed Morsi, who hailed from the Brotherhood, following mass protests against what was seen as his one-year divisive rule.
The Brotherhood was designated a "terrorist organization" months after Morsi's ouster.
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