Egypt’s highest court has overturned the death sentence against ousted Islamist President Mohammed Mursi.

Mursi had been condemned to death for his part in a mass prison break during the 2011 revolution.

He was the first president to be democratically elected in Egypt after the revolution, but was removed by the military a year later after street protests against his administration.

Tuesday’s court ruling means he is no longer under threat of execution, although he is serving three lengthy jail sentences.

He was sentenced to 20 years in prison without parole on charges arising from the killing of protesters in December 2012.

The former president was also sentenced to 40 years on charges of spying for Qatar and handed a life sentence on charges of spying for the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.

The court also annulled death sentences for five leaders of his banned Muslim Brotherhood movement, including its supreme guide Mohammed Badie, convicted in the same case.

Twenty-one life sentences for other members were also overturned.

Mursi escaped from Wadi Natroun jail in January 2011 and was convicted of colluding with foreign militants in a plot to free imprisoned Islamists.

The death sentences were approved earlier this year by Egypt’s highest religious authority, the Grand Mufti Shawqi Allam.

Since overthrowing Mursi in 2013, current Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has tried to crush the Muslim Brotherhood, which he says is part of a terrorist network that poses an existential threat to the Arab and Western worlds.

However the Muslim brotherhood, Egypt’s oldest political movement, says its activities are entirely peaceful and denies using violent methods.