An Egyptian court upheld on Tuesday the death sentence of former President Mohamed Morsi for plotting prison breaks and attacks on police during the 2011 uprising.

The sentence, which had been initially issued in May, was now upheld after a consultation with the Grand Mufti, the highest religious authority in Egypt.

Earlier on Tuesday, the same court sentenced Morsi to life imprisonment on charges for spying for the Palestinian Hamas movement, Lebanon's Hezbollah and Iran.

There is a possibility for the verdicts to be appealed, Al Jazeera informs.

The death sentences of other leading members of Muslim Brotherhood, including its supreme guide Mohammed Badie, were also upheld.

Morsi is accused of escaping from Wadi Natroun prison in 2011 and plotting with foreign militants to release Islamists during mass prison breaks.

The 2011 protest brought to an end the thirty-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak and Morsi became the first democratically elected President of Egypt a year later.

However he was deposed by the army in 2013 after mass street protests against his rule and is already serving a twenty-year imprisonment sentence for ordering the arrest and torture of demonstrators.

Incumbent President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has led a crackdown against supporters of Morsi and his movement Muslim Brotherhood, which has resulted in the death of hundreds and imprisonment of thousands.

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