An international legal team will arrive in Egypt within hours to attend the first session of ousted president Mohamed Morsi's trial, scheduled for Monday, according to a London-based senior Muslim Brotherhood leader.

Ibrahim Mounir told said that the team comprises four lawyers, including an American and a Briton.

"They will not defend Morsi because they do not consider him a defendant in the first place," he said.

"They will attend the trial in a show of solidarity with the elected president," added Mounir.

He declined to identify the four lawyers over fears that Egyptian authorities might deny their access into the country.
Morsi, Egypt's first democratically-elected president, is expected to appear in Court for the first time on Monday.

He faces charges – which critics insist are politically motivated – of inciting the murder of protesters outside Cairo's Ittihadiya presidential palace late last year.

It will be Morsi's first public appearance since his ouster by the military in July following protests against his presidency.

Members of Morsi's defense team say the deposed leader refuses to recognize the court's legitimacy, stressing that they themselves would only attend the trial in the capacity of "observers" and not to mount a legal defense.

The National Alliance for the Defense of Legitimacy, Morsi's main support bloc, has called on supporters to protest outside the trial's venue on Monday.

PHOTO CAPTION

Supporters of Egypt's ousted President Mohammed Morsi chant slogans against Egyptian Defense Minister Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi while raising their open palms with four raised fingers, which has become a symbol of the Rabaah al-Adawiya mosque, where Morsi supporters had held a sit-in for weeks that was violently dispersed in August during a protest in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, Oct. 4, 2013.

AA