By AFP
CAIRO: An Egyptian court sentenced 11 Islamists to two years in prison for election campaigning for the banned Muslim Brotherhood, a judicial official said on Saturday, a day before a parliamentary poll.
The official said the Alexandria criminal court reached its verdict in a single hearing on Friday, unusual in a country where judicial proceedings are often drawn out.
The activists were arrested as part of a crackdown against the Islamist opposition group that has seen at least 1,000 of its supporters detained in the past two months and more than a dozen candidates disqualified.
The 11 were found guilty of taking part in demonstrations and campaigning for the Brotherhood with leaflets that contained religious slogans, the official said.
Brotherhood lawyer Abdel Moneim Abdel-Maqsoud said five had been released pending appeal, adding another 350 activists faced similar charges.
Religious parties are prohibited in Egypt and candidates for Sunday’s election are not allowed to use religious slogans in their campaigns.
The ban on religious slogans is thought to have been aimed at the Brotherhood’s motto: “Islam is the solution.”
Others running in the election, including some of the ruling National Democratic Party’s roughly 800 candidates, have used quotes from the Quran or Islamic phrases on their posters.
The Muslim Brotherhood controls a fifth of Egypt’s outgoing parliament.
