Ousted Egypt President Mohamed Morsy dies in court

Ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy collapsed and died in a Cairo court Monday, soon after making a final statement in his trial on espionage charges.

Egypt’s first democratically elected leader, Morsy, 67, had just been led back to a soundproof glass cage inside the courtroom when he fell unconscious, Egypt’s public prosecution office said in a statement.

“He spoke 7 minutes just before the trial session adjourned,” Morsy’s lawyer Abdel Moneim Abdel Maqsoud told CNN. “A minute after, we saw fuss in the court glass box, we could hear the defendants screaming, Dr. Morsi has fallen,” said Abdel Maqsoud, who is also the lead lawyer for the banned Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Morsy had closed his final statement by quoting a verse of a poem that read, “My country is dear even if it oppressed me and my people are honorable even if they were unjust to me,” Abdel Maqsoud said.

Egypt’s state-run Al Ahram online reported that the former leader suffered a heart attack. He was pronounced dead after arriving at hospital at 4:50 p.m. (10:50 a.m. ET), the prosecutor’s office said. No apparent injuries were found on his body, it added.