CAIRO: Egypt's official news agency says five senior members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood have been convicted of money laundering and raising funds abroad. MENA says the Supreme State Criminal Security Court on Saturday sentenced the sole defendant in custody, Osama Suleiman, to three years in jail. The four other defendants — one of them a Saudi national — were tried in absentia. They received jail terms of five-to-eight years. The ruling cannot be appealed. The men were charged last April with raising money through conferences in England under the pretext that the funds were for Islamic charities. Though banned, the Muslim Brotherhood has renounced violence and is somewhat tolerated by the state. Its members can run for elections as independents. Police arrested more than 1,000 of its members before a parliamentary election last November that it boycotted after the first round in which it failed to win a single seat. The group, which controlled a fifth of the outgoing parliament, accused the government of rigging the election, as did another main opposition party which also boycotted the vote.
