Egyptian court jails editor charged with insulting president

An Egyptian court on Thursday ordered the editor of a daily newspaper be jailed until the resumption in mid-September of his trial on charges of insulting President Mohammed Morsi, state television said, dpa reported.

Prosecutors told the court that Islam Afifi, editor of the liberal al-Destour newspaper, has spread false news insulting Islamist Morsi and inciting sectarian tensions, according to the report.

Islamists have filed several cases against journalists accusing them of inciting violence.

Afifi's supporters gathered outside the court and shouted slogans denouncing the decision to jail him until the trial resumes September 16.

Al-Destour, owned by a Christian businessman, claimed in several issues that Morsi had become president through vote fraud and warned that his election could trigger a sectarian war in Egypt.

The court will next month hear a case against television talkshow host Tawfiq Okasha, a critic of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest political group. He is accused of inciting violence against Morsi.

Okasha's privately owned Al-Faraeen broadcaster, which means the Pharaohs, was taken off the air for a month after he suggested that the Brotherhood was behind militant attacks that killed 16 Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula.