An Egyptian court has sentenced eight men, including two Muslim Brotherhood leaders, to fifteen years in prison over alleged maltreatment of a lawyer during the 2011 uprising that toppled the former dictator, Hosni Mubark.

On Saturday, the court in Cairo sentenced Brotherhood leaders, Mohamed al-Beltagy and Safwat Hegazy, as well as a journalist from Arabic-language al-Jazeera news network and one other defendant to 15 years in prison.

The court also sentenced four other defendants, including Osama Yassin, former youth minister under deposed president, Mohamed Morsi, to three years in jail.

The defendants were found guilty of "torturing, electrocuting and sexually assaulting" a lawyer after locking him up for three days inside the office of a travel agency near Cairo's Tahrir Square on February 3, 2011.

On September 30, Cairo Criminal Court sentenced 68 people to up to 15 years in jail, after they were found guilty of homicide in clashes between supporters and opponents of Morsi.

Morsi was toppled in a military coup led by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the current president and the former head of the armed forces in July 2013.

Sisi is accused of leading the suppression of Brotherhood supporters, as hundreds of them have been killed in clashes with Egyptian security forces over the past year.

Human rights groups say the military crackdown on the supporters of Morsi has left over 1,400 people dead and 22,000 arrested, while some 200 people have been sentenced to death in mass trials.

The UN Human Rights Council has repeatedly expressed concern over the Egyptian security forces’ heavy-handed crackdown and the killing of peaceful anti-government protesters.