Egypt Finds 2 Men Guilty in Spy Case

An Egyptian engineer was found guilty Saturday of spying for Israel and sentenced to 15 years in jail with hard labor after President Hosni Mubarak overturned a previous acquittal on the same charges.

A fellow defendant identified as a Russian was found guilty in absentia on the spy charges and sentenced to 25 years.

The engineer, Sherif Filali, had been found not guilty of espionage in an emergency state security court last June. A judge in that trial called the Egyptian a true patriot because he turned himself in as soon as he realized that he might have been involved in a crime.

But Mubarak threw out the acquittal and ordered a retrial in September. Filali has no right to appeal under Egypt’s emergency laws, which human rights groups have condemned as unfair.

Rulings in emergency courts cannot be appealed and are subject to Mubarak’s review. The president can overturn the verdicts and order retrials under an emergency law that has been in place since Muslim militants killed President Anwar Sadat in 1981.

Filali, who fingered prayer beads in court, was accused of trying to collect military information and data on Egyptian tourism and the southern Toshka agricultural development program for Israel. Israel has denied any involvement.

Court sources said the Russian man recruited Filali in Spain to obtain secret information about Egypt for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.

Court documents said Filali shuttled between Egypt and Spain in 1999 before realizing the information he was collecting was for Mossad.