Egypt nuclear engineer convicted of spying for Israel

CAIRO, June 25 (Reuters) A nuclear engineer at Egypt's state-run Atomic Energy Agency was convicted today of spying for Israel and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Mohamed Sayed Saber Ali was accused of taking documents from Inshas, the site of one of Egypt's small nuclear reactors, and handing them for 17,000 dollars to foreign contacts said to be working for Israeli intelligence.

The court also sentenced to life imprisonment two of Ali's alleged contacts -- an Irishman named as Brian Peter and a Japanese named as Shiro Izo. It tried the two foreigners in absentia and Egypt has not said where they are.

Life imprisonment in the Egyptian system usually means 25 years. Remission for good behaviour is possible.

Ali had pleaded not guilty to the charge of spying for Israel. He admitted taking documents from his work place but he said that they had been published and were not secret.

He told the court that he had met the two foreign defendants several times in Hong Kong without at first thinking they were working for Israel. He said he informed Egyptian authorities of the meetings after growing suspicious of the two men.

''I became sure in the fourth meeting that I was dealing with a strange party that was working for a foreign intelligence apparatus,'' he told the court.

He said he had told an Egyptian intelligence official in Saudi Arabia about his contacts. But the official, Ahmed Bahaeddin, said he thought Ali had contacted him because he was worried his spying for Israel might come to light.

An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman said at the start of the trial that he had no information on the matter.

Egyptian trials of suspected spies for Israel have often soured relations between Israel and Egypt, which in 1979 became the first Arab country to make peace with the Jewish state. In April an Egyptian-Canadian dual citizen was sentenced to 15 years in prison for spying for Israel in a separate case.

REUTERS SKB DS1436