Three suspects charged in the bombings of Taba were sentenced to death few minutes ago, by a State Security Court in Ismailia.
AP report on the trial:
Egypt sentences 3 suspects to death
By ASHRAF SWEILAM
Thursday, September 7, 2006
ISMAILIA, Egypt — A state security court Thursday sentenced three members of an Islamic militant group to death for their role in several attacks in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula that killed dozens of people in the past two years.
Judge Ahmad al-Khashab of the Supreme Emergency State Security Court read the verdicts of the three of 14 defendants, then adjourned the case until Nov. 30, when the verdicts for the remaining 11 will be given.
Younes Mohammed Mahmoud, Osama Mohammed Abdul-Ghani and Mohammed Jaez Sabbah are members of the Tawhid and Jihad group blamed for the attacks in Taba and Sharm el-Sheik.
The October 2004 bombings in the resorts of Taba and nearby Ras Shitan, killed 34 people, while the July 2005 attack in Sharm el-Sheik left 64 dead.
Some analysts said the attacks bore the hallmarks of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida terror network but Egyptian officials have dismissed involvement by the group, insisting they were the work of a domestic group known as Tawhid and Jihad.
Fears of al-Qaida activity in Egypt have grown since the terrorist network’s deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri, an Egyptian, said in an August videotape that a revived faction of the Egyptian militant group Gamaa Islamiya was joining al-Qaida. Gamaa Islamiya was the biggest militant group during a campaign of violence in Egypt in the 1990s that claimed hundreds of lives.