A court on Sunday convicted an Egyptian of plotting to assassinate President Hosni Mubarak and of spying for Iran's Revolutionary Guards.
At the end of a trial that set back attempts to improve Egypt's strained relations with Iran, the State Security Court gave Mahmoud Mohammed Eid Dabous life imprisonment for the assassination plot and an additional 10 years for espionage.
Dabous' co-defendant, Mahmoud Reda Hussein, an Iranian diplomat formerly serving in Cairo, was sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia.
Iran, which had denied any involvement, rejected the verdicts against both defendants as "ridiculous." Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said Egypt had "set up a kangaroo court just to please Israel."
In court, Dabous said: "This is unfair. I'm innocent. I shall complain to God about the injustice done to me," Dabous said, wearing a white robe in the caged dock. A life sentence in Egypt means 25 years imprisonment.
Dabous told reporters he had been promised a presidential pardon if he cooperated with the investigation. But Judge Adel Abdul-Salam Goma'a denied any such promise had been made.
"He was involved in a vicious attempt to assassinate the leader of this nation in full disregard of the feelings of the Egyptian people,"Goma'a said in handing down the verdict.
The judge said Dabous and Hussein did not know "the real love Egyptians have for their leader."
Sunday's hearing was the first time that Mubarak had been named as the target of the plot.
Police had also charged Dabous with providing Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards with information to carry out terrorist attacks in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Before the verdict was read, Dabous claimed he was tortured in order to make him confess to "a false case."
The prosecution said Dabous tried to gather information about Mubarak's residence in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik and send it to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
Relations between Iran and Egypt have been fraught with tension since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.
Egypt has in the past repeatedly accused Iran of supporting the militants who killed President Anwar Sadat in 1981.
Iran was offended when Egypt gave sanctuary to its ousted shah after the 1979 revolution.
RSS