almotamar.net google - CAIRO -- A Cairo court Saturday sentenced an Egyptian with Canadian citizenship to 15 years behind bars for spying for Israel, based on a confession the defendant said was extracted by torture. Judge Sayyed Al Gohary of Cairo's high state security court sentenced Mohammed Essam Ghoneim Al Attar, 31, and three Israelis tried in absentia, to 15 years in prison and fines of 10,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,760) each.

Throughout his trial which began in February, Attar protested his innocence, claiming that Egyptian security services extracted his confession by torture.

"The accused followed the path of the devil and sold himself and his nation to [the devil]," Gohary told the court during the lightning 10-minute session.

Prosecutors charged that Attar was recruited by his three Israeli co-defendants when he visited Turkey on a tourist visa in 2001.

The prosecution said Attar was trained by the Mossad officers to gather information from Arabs living in Turkey - an activity he later continued when he moved to Canada, where he obtained citizenship.

Attar was charged with espionage, bribery, and recruiting Arabs abroad for foreign intelligence services.

"A sinful meeting brought him with the three [Israelis], which led to him filing reports on the activities of Egyptians and Arabs for eventual recruitment in the Mossad, harming Egypt's national interest," the judge told the court.

Attar, a former student at Cairo's Islamic Al Azhar University, was arrested while visiting his family in Cairo January 1.

He was described in the press as a homosexual - considered a sin in Islam and a taboo subject in Egypt - and as a convert to Christianity, also a sensitive issue in the mainly Muslim country.

"He changed religion and converted to Christianity. He is no gain to either of these religions," Gohary said.

During the trial, Attar insisted that he was neither a spy nor a Christian convert, and loudly recited the "shehada" - the Muslim declaration of faith - during one hearing.

In February, Attar said he had been treated well by police, but that the intelligence service tortured him into a making up a story of espionage, which he borrowed from an Egyptian comic book.

"I accuse one man from national security, Nabil Mahmud. He made me sign a document saying that I had cooperated with a fictional character called Daniel Levy," Attar told reporters at the time.

One of the three Israelis has the same name, and Egypt has asked Interpol to arrest him and the two others, who are said to be of Turkish origin.

"I am sad about the verdict because I am convinced of [Attar's] innocence," his lawyer, Ibrahim Al-Bassiouni, said Saturday, adding that Attar received a light sentence. "Usually in cases like this one expects 75 years."

According to a Canadian newspaper, Attar told Egyptian interrogators he recruited several gay or financially strapped Arabs for Mossad while he was living in Canada.

A transcript of his interrogation in Egypt, viewed by The Globe and Mail newspaper, alleged that Attar was a gay Zionist who turned his back on Islam and worked with the Israeli spy agency to undermine Egyptian security.

According to the paper, he cited his new religion and homosexuality in applying for UN refugee status, which eventually led him to Canada.

Attar has repeatedly insisted that he moved to Canada three years ago after a row with his parents, and that he moved back to Egypt in January because it is "home."