CAIRO, Jun 18 (Aswat Masriya) - The lawyer of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Mursi will challenge on Thursday a prison sentence handed to the former president over clashes outside the presidential palace during his tenure.

A Cairo court sentenced Mursi last April to 20 years of maximum security prison for charges of show of force and detention associated with physical torture during deadly protests in 2012. 

Mursi was also sentenced to five years of probation in the first sentence served against him since his ouster in July 2013. 

Abdel Moneim Abdel Maqsoud, Muslim Brotherhood member and one of the lawyers representing Mursi told Aswat Masriya he will appeal the sentence at the Court of Cassation.

Abdel Maqsoud said Mursi's defence team decided to issue the appeal without going back to the former president as they could not meet with him and receive his approval first.

The former president has repeatedly said that he does not recongnise the trials he faces.  

He was being tried alongside 14 others, including Muslim Brotherhood leading figures. 

The charges were levelled against them after demonstrators protesting in front of the Ittihadiya presidential palace in December 2012 were killed. They were protesting to object to a constitutional decree issued by the Islamist president.

All defendants were acquitted of murder charges.

Should the court accept the appeal, the sentence will be dropped and a retrial will be in order.

On Tuesday, Mursi was sentenced to death and handed a life imprisonment sentence after being convicted in two cases.

Mursi was sentenced to death after being accused of escaping the Wadi al-Natroun prison during the January 2011 uprising.

He was meanwhile sentenced to life in prison for an espionage case. He was charged with espionage, disclosing state secrets to foreign countries, funding terrorism, conducting military training to serve an international branch of the Brotherhood, and "endangering the independence, unity and safety of the state."

The floor for appealing the aforementioned sentences is yet to be opened.

Mursi, who became Egypt's president in June 2012 after the first democratic elections in the country, was eventually ousted at the hands of the military following mass protests against his rule, after a year in power.

Since his removal in July 2013, Mursi has faced multiple charges in five trials.

The former president still faces charges in a separate espionage trial and for insulting the judiciary.