Court sentences Egyptian to 10-year prison term

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt -- A state security court convicted an Egyptian of offering to spy for the Israeli intelligence service and sentenced him to 10 years in prison at hard labor.

Magdy Anwar Mohamed Tawfiq, 52, was convicted of trying to contact a foreign country with the intent of harming national interests. His lawyer had argued Tawfiq was mentally unstable and questioned his claims of knowledge of important information about past hijackings, including the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Judge Safa-ul-Nufous Mohammed el-Khatib said mental instability "does not negate the criminal responsibility" and noted that Tawfiq was not found legally insane.

Tawfiq appeared composed and murmured verses from Quran as the conviction and sentence were announced.

He told reporters from behind bars in the courtroom that the verdict was "unjust and not based on any evidence."

"I challenge the judge to bring evidence," Tawfiq said. "All that I wanted was to offer testimony about an international case that has nothing to do with Egypt, and I don't intend to attack Egypt at all."

Tawfiq was charged in March after faxing a letter to the Israeli consular office in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria allegedly claiming to be an Egyptian diplomat and offering his services to Israel's Mossad intelligence service.

Contacted consulate

He has acknowledged contacting the consulate, but has denied offering to cooperate with Mossad. Tawfiq said he had contacted the office for help getting in touch with the international court that convicted a Libyan in the Pan Am bombing, which killed 270 people.

Tawfiq also claimed to have important information about French flight that exploded over the Sahara in 1989, killing all 170 people on board.

Tawfiq confessed to forging papers indicating he worked as a diplomat for the Egyptian Embassy in Congo.

He told reporters he had worked in Congo for four years until being fired for contacting European intelligence services. He also claimed to have worked with the CIA then.

Investigators determined Tawfiq had worked in the Congo with an Egyptian-African cooperation fund affiliated with the Egyptian Foreign Ministry and had been fired.

Tawfiq's sentence cannot be appealed and can be overturned only by the president.

In March, a state security court sentenced Egyptian engineer Shereef Fawzi Mohammed el-Filali, 36, to 15 years at hard labor on charges of spying for Israel. In 1997, Egyptian courts sentenced an Arab Israeli, Azzam Azzam, to 15 years in prison for spying.