An Egyptian military court has "mistakenly" sentenced a toddler to life in prison for murdering three people.
More than a hundred people, including four-year-old Ahmed Mansour Qurani Ali, were convicted in connection with the 2014 riots that left three people dead, according to Hurriyet Daily News.
The murders allegedly took place during a protest by supporters of former President Mohammed Morsi' Muslim Brotherhood political outfit in the southern province of Fayyoum. The boy was 18 months old at the time of the crime.
"I'm a poor helpless man, the son of this land and I intend no harm to anyone but I have nothing to do with it. I do not want anyone to take my son from me," Qurani Ali's father, Mansour Qurni Ahmed Ali, told a news channel after the court ruling last week, according to Gulf News.
Egyptian military, however, admitted it was a mistake to hand a life sentence to a toddler. Spokesman Brig. Gen. Mohamed Samir said that it was a case of "mistaken identity" and the court should have sentenced a 16-year-old teenage boy with a similar name instead, according to Express.
Defense lawyer Mahmoud Abu Kaf dismissed the military's mistaken identity theory. The toddler's father had been arrested earlier and detained for four months.
"If it is true that it was a mistaken identity, why did they come to arrest the boy? Why haven't security arrested the right defendant then?" Kaf asked CNN.
