Egypt says jihadist group planned to blow up courts

CAIRO, Jun 15 (Reuters) Egyptian authorities have charged 14 men with planning to blow up a law courts complex in the Nile Delta and recruit young men to fight Israel alongside the Palestinians, prosecution sources said today.

The men belonged to a jihadist group based in the Delta city of Tanta and had been in detention for questioning for three months without charge, the sources said.

The independent Cairo newspaper Al Masry Al Youm said today the leader of the group was a veterinarian called Sami Mohamed Sadek.

According to the charge sheet the group had already sent some people to Sudan for guerrilla training, it added. Some of them died in Sudan of disease, it said.

The newspaper said members of the group denied all the charges.

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