Three Egyptians suspected of links to Al Qaeda were sentenced to death on Thursday for involvement in the October 2004 bombings in northern Sinai which killed 34 people. The defendants erupted into shouts of "God is great" when the verdict was pronounced in the court in the canal city of Ismailiya. Ten other defendants who were also in court received prison terms ranging from five years to life.The bombings marked the beginning of a spate of deadly attacks in Sinai and triggered an ongoing hunt by Egypt's security forces for extremist Islamist groups in the peninsula. The judge at Ismailiya emergency state security court sentenced Younis Mohammad Mahmoud Erian Garir, Osama Mohammad Abdel Ghani Nakhlawi and Mohammad Gaez Sobah Hussein Abdallah to death by hanging.
Both trial and verdicts were criticised as unfair by human rights groups and defence lawyers. The defendants charged that Israel and the US were behind the attacks as they were being led away from the court. No date has been set for the executions.
In September, the files of Garir, Nakhlawi and Abdallah were handed to the grand mufti, the state's top cleric, who must approve all death sentences before they can be pronounced, except those issued by military courts.
Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, who has campaigned for the death penalty to be abolished in Egypt, described the verdict as "heart-breaking" due to what he said was the lack of evidence to prove the defendants guilt. "These people never received a fair trial," said Bahgat, whose rights organistation monitored the Taba case closely. "The defendants have all presented credible allegations of torture in court and they were denied access to a lawyer during the interrogation," he told AFP.
There is no right of appeal for trials in emergency state security courts. The defendants' only option is to petition the president, who has the authority to reduce the sentence or order a retrial.