A court in Cairo has acquitted the former supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood on charges that he insulted the judiciary.

Mahdy Akef said Egyptian judges were "corrupt" during an interview with Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida in April 2013.

Akef, who was arrested a day after Mohamed Morsi’s ouster on 3 July 2013, also faces separate trials for inciting the killing of protesters at the Brotherhood's headquarters in Cairo during anti-Morsi protests on 30 June 2013, and during clashes in Manial.

The 86-year-old was sent to Maadi military hospital, where ousted president Hosni Mubarak resides, following a deterioration in his health.

He served as the Islamist group’s supreme guide between 2004 and 2010.

He was succeeded by Mohamed Badie, who was sentenced to death along with 682 others for attacking a police station and killing an officer in violence that followed the bloody dispersal of pro-Morsi protest camps in August 2013.

Since Morsi’s ouster thousands of Brotherhood leaders, members and sympathisers have been detained.

Last December, the Brotherhood was designated a terrorist group by the government, which accuses it of orchestrating attacks against the police and the army that have left hundreds dead. The group has denied the accusations.


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