An Egyptian court Tuesday sentenced ousted president Mohammad Mursi to 20 years in prison for abuses against protesters but acquitted the Islamist leader of charges carrying a possible death penalty.

An Egyptian court Tuesday sentenced ousted president Mohammad Mursi to 20 years in prison for abuses against protesters but acquitted the Islamist leader of charges carrying a possible death penalty.

Mursi was convicted of ordering the arrest and torture of demonstrators involved in clashes in 2012 when he was president, in a verdict Amnesty International denounced as a "travesty of justice".

Fourteen others were convicted of the same charges, with most also sentenced by the Cairo court to 20 years in jail.

It acquitted the defendants of inciting murder in connection with the deaths of a journalist and two protesters during the December 5, 2012 clashes outside the presidential palace in Cairo.

Mursi, dressed in a white prison uniform and standing in a soundproof cage, raised his fists when the verdict was announced, an AFP correspondent reported from the courtroom.

Defense lawyers said they would appeal the convictions while rights groups voiced alarm at the ruling, the first in a series of trials Mursi is facing.

"This verdict shatters any remaining illusion of independence and impartiality in Egypt's criminal justice system," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty's deputy Middle East and North Africa director.

She called for a full retrial or the ex-president's release.

Egypt's first freely elected leader, Mursi came to power following the 2011 ouster of longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak in a popular uprising.

But after just a year in power, Mursi was himself toppled by then-army chief and now President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi following mass street protests.

Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood has been blacklisted and targeted in a government crackdown that has seen hundreds killed and thousands thrown in jail.

Other Brotherhood leaders have been sentenced to death and Tuesday's decision to acquit Mursi on the incitement to murder charge left some surprised.

"We were expecting them to be convicted of murder," Ramy Ghanem, a lawyer for an anti-Mursi protester who was wounded in the clashes, told AFP.

"But the sentences are not bad. We were expecting life in prison, but then 20 years is not very different," he said. A life sentence in Egypt is 25 years.

Hundreds of Mursi supporters have been sentenced to death in speedy mass trials which the United Nations has called "unprecedented in recent history".