A CAIRO court sentenced an Egyptian to 35 years in prison today for spying for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and planning to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The court sentenced Mahmoud Eid Mohamed Dabbous to 25 years for plotting to kill Mr Mubarak and 10 years for supplying information to the Revolutionary Guard about a petrochemicals plant in the Saudi oil city of Yanbu with the aim of blowing it up.Egypt's public prosecutor had previously said Dabbous, who was working in Saudi Arabia at the time, had supplied Iranian diplomat Mohammad Reza Hosseindost with information that helped orchestrate an attack on Yanbu in May. A wing of the militant group al Qaeda claimed the attack, which killed five Western engineers. Iran has denied that Dabbous spied for its Revolutionary Guard. Dabbous said during his trial that he made confessions under pressure about planning to kill the president.
The court also sentenced in absentia Iranian diplomat Hosseindost to 25 years in prison for recruiting Dabbous and plotting terror attacks and political assassinations in Egypt. Iran has not had full diplomatic ties with Egypt since the Iranian revolution in 1979, when Tehran broke off relations because Egypt had signed a peace treaty with Israel. Hosseindost worked in the Iranian interests office in Cairo.