Egypt’s toppled Islamist president Mohamed Mursi will go on trial next week as the country remains divided.

Mursi, who was deposed by the army in July, is charged with inciting the killing of 10 opposition protesters while in office in 2012.

Also standing the trial before a criminal court will be three aides to Mursi and several senior leaders in his Muslim Brotherhood organisation.

The exact location of the trial has yet to be officially announced due to security reasons, after some of Mursi’s supporters vowed to storm the courtroom to free him.

Local media speculated that Mursi, 62, would be tried at a makeshift courtroom in a police building near the high-security Tora Prison in southern Cairo.

Mursi, a US-educated engineering professor, has been held at an undisclosed location since his overthrow on July 3.

He has refused to hire a defence lawyer or recognise the authority of the court, according to a Brotherhood-led alliance.

A team of volunteer lawyers have said they will attend the trial as observers.

Mursi’s Islamist allies have denounced his toppling as a coup and vowed to continue street protests until he is restored to power.

The military said its removal of Mursi, Egypt’s first democratically-elected president, was in response to street protests by millions of Egyptians demanding an end to his one-year rule.

“By putting the president on trial, the coup plotters aim at breaking the popular and revolutionary will  and bring Mubarak’s regime back to power,” the pro-Mursi alliance said this week, referring to his predecessor Hosni Mubarak, who was deposed in 2011.

The alliance has called for holding a massive rally at the place of the trial, raising fears of bloody violence.

The interior ministry said thousands of policemen and soldiers would secure the court building and its vicinity to prevent protests.

Hundreds of people have been killed in Egypt since Mursi’s overthrow.

The military-installed government has also detained senior Brotherhood leaders, accusing the group of “terrorism”.

The Brotherhood has repeatedly denied involvement in attacks targeting mainly security forces and churches.

Mursi’s trial comes more than a month after an Egyptian court banned the Brotherhood and froze its assets.

Mursi’s election as president in mid-2012 gave the Brotherhood its first taste of power.  In the last public remarks before his ouster he acknowledged “many mistakes” which needed “to be corrected” but insisted he was chosen in a “free and fair election”.  But his words fell on deaf ears.

Mursi’s position appears unchanged since the night of his ouster, on which he released a defiant video challenging the military.