The defendants, all wearing white and held in a cage, denounced the sentence as unjust, embraced each other and shouted repeatedly: "There is no God but God!" the Moslem declaration of faith. "Wake-up Moslems," they shouted in unison in Arabic. "Iraq came after Palestine and tomorrow whose turn will it be?"
The sentences were pronounced as Egypt and other Arab countries faced daily protests from Islamists and others over Israel's assassination of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in the Palestinian territories. Twelve people, including the three Britons, one Egyptian who was tried in his absence and one Palestinian, Anas Yunes, a 21-year-old dentistry student from East Jerusalem were sentenced to five years in prison. Seven were given three-year jail terms, and the remainder were sent to jail for one year.
Montaser Al Zayat, an Islamist lawyer who represented the 26, who were arrested in April 2002, said, "these are very harsh sentences, especially because there is no appeal." A day before the verdict he had opined that the Britons and some of the other defendants might be acquitted.
"This [verdict] demonstrates that regimes are so weak they cannot stand anybody speaking," said Majid Nawaz, 26, an Islamic law student at the University of London who was in Egypt for a one-year program. "This is a victory for our ideas," said Ian Nisbett, 29, who converted to Islam several years ago and came to Egypt to learn Arabic after studying at Westminster University, as his weeping wife held his hand through the cage. "If they give me 50 years, I wouldn't change my ideas. It proves this is a dictatorship," said Reza Pankhurst, 28, a British computer programmer who lives in Cairo with his parents. "We are being condemned for our ideas, because we are calling for changing regimes by peaceful means," said Ahmed Ibrahim, a 37-year-old Egyptian, who was sentenced to five years in jail.
Mike Gifford, number two at the British embassy, said "it was a long and difficult trial. We respect the verdict of the court."
At the first court hearing in October 2002, Pankhurst told reporters from the caged dock that he and other defendants had been subjected to prolonged torture while in custody, which forced them to make confessions they later retracted. All the defendants pleaded not guilty. In line with Egyptian law, the court will release an explanation of the verdict, detailing the charges for which each person was convicted.
The Hezb Al Tahrir, founded in 1953 by the Palestinian cleric Takieddin Al-Nabahani, seeks to turn all Moslem nations into a single Islamic state. Active in London, it has grown in several Arab states as well as in Moslem Central Asia.
