The two men named above were sentenced to death by the Supreme Military Court in Cairo on 10 January 1995. They were among 16 defendants tried in the case of the attempted murder of the prominent novelist Naguib Mahfouz. Of the others, three were acquitted, two received life sentences and the remaining nine received sentences of between three and fifteen years. The men were also charged with membership of al-Gama’a al-Islamiya, a banned Islamist group and with possession of weapons. If the sentences are upheld, the two men sentenced to death could be executed within weeks.
