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Egyptian court sentences three militants to death

CAIRO: An Egyptian court sentenced on Tuesday three Muslim militants to death for shooting policemen in attacks in the southern province of Aswan in 1993.

Three policemen were killed, two were wounded and six others shot at in the series of attacks, the prosecutor said.

The Supreme State Security Court in Cairo postponed until May 5 the verdicts on another 26 other militants charged in the same case. Five of those 26 are on the run.

The men sentenced to death are Mohamed Abdel-Raouf, Ayman Kamal and Abdel-Nasser Abu Kharouf.

The prosecution said the 29 defendants were members of the Gama'a al-Islamiya (Islamic Group), the largest militant organisation fighting the government.

It said Abdel-Raouf and Kamal killed policemen Ahmed Saber Hussein and Mohamed Mahmoud Mohamed who were guarding a church in the town of Aswan in March 1983.

Abu Kharouf and five other defendants took part in an attack in which policeman Fayez Jumaa Radwan was wounded in the town of Edfu in July of the same year, it added.

The Egyptian authorities have now sentenced 70 militants to death since the Gama'a took up arms in 1992, many of them through quick-justice military courts. The group says it wants to overthrow the government and set up a strict Islamic state.

Forty-seven of the militants have been executed, 16 are on the run and seven are on death row, including the three sentenced on Tuesday.

The mufti of Egypt, the supreme religious law officer, must approve the death sentences before they become final.-Reuter