Egypt's state security court sentenced an engineer to 25 years' jail on Monday for betraying nuclear secrets to Israel. Mohammed Sayyed Saber, 35, who was arrested at the beginning of the year, had pleaded not guity to the charges.
Wearing white and shackled to a guard in a cage inside the courtroom, Sabar was visibly stunned as the verdict was announced. His wife and mother broke down outside the court as he was led away. During his trial, he insisted that any information he had divulged was already in the public domain and had been handed over with the blessing of the authorities.
Saber acknowledged that he had supplied information about the Egyptian atomic energy authority where he worked to presumed agents of Israel's Mossad overseas intelligence agency.
But he insisted he had kept the Egyptian embassy in Saudi Arabia, where he lived, abreast of his activities and denied they had amounted to espionage. "All the information I gave was never with the intention of spying," Saber told the High State Security Court.
"I was not a spy and the information I gave was not secret, it was all published on the Internet." Prosecutors had charged that Saber helped Israeli intelligence hack into the Egyptian atomic agency's computer system between February 2006 and February this year, in exchange for 17,000 dollars and a laptop.
They said he also provided Israeli agents with classified documents to do with the Inshas nuclear research centre, north of Cairo. Saber acknowledged that he had been approached by two presumed Israeli agents - one Irish, one Japanese - who are in absentia co-defendants in the trial, after publishing his CV online.
He admitted that in a series of contacts culminating in a visit to Hong Kong they had grilled him on aspects of Egypt's nuclear programme, a line of questioning he said had made him feel "uncomfortable" enough to contact the Egyptian authorities in late 2006.
The questions had focused on whether Egypt had a uranium enrichment programme, what contacts it had with declared nuclear powers and what security arrangements were in force at the atomic energy authority.