EGYPT - Oct 31 - Egypt Convicts Sadat's Nephew Of Defaming Military.

Talaat el-Sadat, the nephew of former President Anwar Sadat and an opposition member of Parliament, was sentenced by a military court to one year in prison on charges that he had defamed the military by essentially blaming it for having a hand in his uncle's death. The case, while attracting less attention than the trial of a former presidential candidate, Ayman Nour, who is serving a five-year prison term on charges widely viewed as politically motivated, comes as the Egyptian authorities have shown decreasing tolerance for critical opposition. With increasing frequency, members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned Islamic organization that amounts to the only organized political opposition in Egypt, have been arrested and held without charge under a law intended to fight terrorism. In Sadat's case, he was stripped of parliamentary immunity on a national holiday by the speaker of the Parliament, Fathi Sorour, a prominent member of the governing National Democratic Party. The papers stripping Sadat of his immunity were signed the day after his appearance on a satellite television show, an action the speaker has said was legal. On Tuesday, a military judge, Brigadier General Abbas Attiya al-Nagdy, sentenced Sadat to a year in jail after a six- day trial. Sadat was convicted of defaming the armed forces, of spreading false information and of suggesting that the government never executed Anwar Sadat's assassin, Khaled el-Islambolli, and instead conspired to let him go free. "Talaat el-Sadat is a victim", said Muhammad Abdel Wahab, one of his defense lawyers, who also served on the team that defended Nour. "He was targeted because he is a popular opposition figure who received a staggering 33,000 votes during the last parliamentary elections". Government and party officials said the case had nothing to do with politics and was based solely on comments Sadat had made on satellite television. "This guy is a loose cannon; he is a populist, and he enjoys being a celebrity", Muhammad Kamal, a member of the upper house of Parliament and a frequent spokesman for the governing party, said in an interview when the trial began. Sadat, the often outlandish and outspoken son of Anwar Sadat's half-brother, Esmat, has long been a harsh critic of the governing party and has a reputation for espousing outrageous conspiracy theories, including charges that his uncle was killed as part of an international plot. But he also has caused deep embarrassment to powerful figures - from leaders of the governing National Democratic Party, whom he publicly accused of corruption, to the Interior Ministry, which he showed at his trial had arrested the wrong person in connection with a massacre of 10 people. A group of Egyptian human rights groups have criticized the decision to bring a civilian before a closed military court - and for what they said was a violation of his freedom of speech. Others have said the decision to prosecute Sadat - regardless of how outrageous his comments may have been - should be viewed as part of a broad political suppression in the country. "The message is that no one is immune, not journalists, not judges, not parliamentarians", said Wael el-Ebrashi, editor in chief of Sawt el Umma, a weekly independent newspaper. Ebrashi will himself face trial next month for printing a list of judges whom his newspaper accused of helping rig parliamentary elections last year. Jano Charbel reported from Cairo, and Michael Slackman from Beirut.