FORMER Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi has been sentenced to death by a high court for his role in a 2011 espionage and jailbreak in the first case of the country's one-time leader being given the maximum penalty. 

In the verdict delivered by Judge Shaaban el-Shami, the Cairo court handed out the sentence yesterday.  As is customary in passing capital punishment in Egypt, the death sentence on Mr Morsi and more than 20 others will be referred to the country’s top Muslim theologian, or mufti, for his non-binding opinion. 

Mr Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president, was ousted by the military in July 2013 after days of mass street protests by Egyptians demanding that he be removed because of his divisive policies. He was already serving a 20-year sentence on charges linked to the killing of protesters outside a Cairo presidential palace in December 2012. 

On January 28 2011, Mr Morsi was arrested along with 24 other Muslim Brotherhood leaders but he escaped from prison in Cairo two days later. His breakout from Wadi el-Natroun Prison received widespread news coverage within hours of its occurrence, with some reports indicating the political prisoners were sprung from detention by armed gangs taking advantage of the chaos of the Egyptian revolution.