Cairo, April 28: An Egyptian court handed down jail sentences on Wednesday to 26 defendants it found guilty of working for Hezbollah.
The 22 accused who were in the dock received jail terms of between six months and 15 years, despite calls from prosecutors for the death penalty to be imposed.
Three of the four defendants who remain on the run, including the alleged head of the Hezbollah cell, Lebanese national Mohammed Qabalan, received life sentences. The fourth received a lesser prison term, lawyers said.
The 26 were convicted of plotting attacks against ships in the Suez Canal and tourist sites, among other charges. Most were detained between late 2008 and January 2009.
The defendants had said in a hand-written that they never planned attacks in Egypt but sought to help the Hamas in Gaza.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah had admitted after the arrests were publicised in April that he sent a senior commander, Mohammed Yusef Mansur, alias Sami Shihab, to Egypt to support Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
He said the cell comprised no more than 10 people and denied they planned attacks inside Egypt.
But judge Adel Abdel Salam Gomaa rejected the defence case, ruling that the defendants were not simply supporting Hamas but had indeed intended to carry out attacks on Egyptian soil.
Lawyers for Mansur acknowledged that he had proposed carrying out attacks against Israeli targets in Egypt in retaliation for the February 2008 assassination in Damascus of Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughniyeh but said the idea had been rejected by the movement’s leadership.
Mansur himself said during a trial break that he and the other defendants had been tortured. Police have denied the accusation.
After the verdict, defence lawyer Abdelmoneim Abdel Maqsud took issue with the legitimacy of the court, a tribunal of exception set up under Egypt’s three-decade-old state of emergency.
“This is a political trial that was taken to a court that offered no guarantee of justice,” he said.
The defendants put on a brave face but that was not shared by relatives of the accused who had gathered outside the court building.
“Ibrahim, apple of your mother’s heart, you went for nothing,” screamed the mother of one of those jailed, Ibrahim Essam. “I swear he didn’t do anything,” she added.
Other relatives cried in shock.
The trial reignited a war of words between Egypt, Hezbollah and Iran.
Egypt, which has no formal diplomatic ties with Iran, accuses Tehran of backing the plot.
Iran and Hezbollah say Egypt contrived the case against the men.
Hezbollah is a vocal supporter of Hamas, which is very popular among many Egyptians.
It accused Cairo of complicity in the Israeli blockade on Gaza and such accusations add to the Egyptian President’s unpopularity in his own country.
—Agencies