EGYPT: An Egyptian-Canadian dual-citizen has been convicted of spying for Israel and sentenced to 15 years in prison in Egypt

An Egyptian court convicted an Egyptian-Canadian dual citizen on Saturday (April 21) of spying for Israel and sentenced him to 15 years in prison, and three Israelis tried in absentia were also found guilty. Mohamed Essam Ghoneim al-Attar, 31, was standing trial over accusations he was paid 56,000 U.S. dollars to spy on Egyptians and Arabs during stays in Canada and Turkey, and of trying to obtain information on Egyptian Coptic Christians abroad. At an earlier hearing al-Attar had denied the charges and said confessions used by prosecutors against him were coerced. Egyptian prosecutors said Israel recruited al-Attar, 31, in 2001 when he was living in Turkey and that intelligence agents assisted him in obtaining a residency permit in Canada under a fake name and found him work in a bank. Israel has dismissed the charges as baseless. Attar was arrested in January at the Cairo airport when he returned home for a family visit. The three Israelis convicted in absentia in the case, said to be Mossad agents, were also handed 15-year jail terms. All four defendants were fined 10,000 Egyptian pounds (1,760 U.S. dollars). Chief Judge Sayyed al-Gohari read out the verdict on Saturday to a packed courtroom. "The court has ruled for the first defendant who is present and for the others in absentia, that the following names should be punished in the following way - Mohamed Essam Ghoneim al-Attar, and Daniel Levy, codenamed as Avi, and Kamal Kushba, and Tungay Konbay, codenamed as Daniel, to fifteen years in a heavy security prison with hard labor and a fine of 10,000 pounds and confiscating all of the equipment on the list attached to this ruling. And it is also incumbent on the defendant to pay all criminal expenses," he said. Since the trial was carried out under Egypt's controversial Emergency Law, which gives the authorities broad powers to suspect civil liberties for security reasons, al-Attar is not afforded the right of appeal, and must petition Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for clemency. "This has been a case heard by a state security emergency court," said Judge al-Gohari in an interview. "You have to see for yourself how a defendant on whom such a judgment has been passed, what does he do exactly, does he appeal or can he air his grievance in another way. We have done our duty within the confines of our judicial competence." Over the course of the trial, the Egyptian media, which hailed Attar's arrest as a triumph for the country's intelligence services, has published what it said were details of his confessions and portrayed the suspect as a spy who had betrayed his country and religion. The purported confessions quotes Attar as saying he had converted to Christianity and that he was gay, a taboo in the conservative Egyptian Muslim community. Al-Attar's lawyer, Ibrahim Ali Mahmoud al-Basyouni said he would continue working on behalf of his client. "God willing I will not let Mohamed al-Attar down because I am fully convinced of his innocence," said al-Basyouni. "I will go on with him, and by the way, I will present to the President of the Republic a petition which is equivalent to an appeal before the cassation court," he said. The conviction of al-Attar and the Mossad agents comes four days after Egyptian authorities charged an Egyptian nuclear engineer and two foreigners - an Irishman and a Japanese man -- with spying for Israel. The state prosecutor said that Mohamed Sayed Saber Ali, 35, is suspected of taking documents from his workplace at Inshas, site of one of Egypt's small research nuclear reactors, and handing them over to his foreign contacts in exchange for for 17,000 U.S. dollars. cairo/os/wr

ITN Source | April 21, 2007

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