CAIRO- Egypt is closely following an appeal by two Egyptians who were sentenced to life imprisonment on espionage charges by Qatar earlier this year, an Egyptian Foreign Ministry official said on Saturday , adding that the appeal would be heard in October. "We have been following the case since the two Egyptian citizens were arrested in 2007. The Egyptian Embassy in Doha managed to release them on bail until the ruling was issued four months ago," said Mohamed Abdel Hakam Egypt's Assistant Foreign Minister for Concular Affairs. He added that the Egyptian Foreign Ministry was"wisely" dealing with the case away from the media. Two Egyptians, Nabil Abdel-Basir, an employee at a Qatari newspaper and Sayed Affifi who worked for the Qatari Ministry of Interior, had been sentenced to life imprisonment by a court in Doha for espionage on behalf of “foreign entities”. It was alleged that they were spying for Asian countries. The Qatari authorities had been keeping the matter under wraps. Monatasser el-Zayyat, a lawyer for the two convicts, said he was confident that his clients would be declared innocent by the appeals court. "Declaring my full confidence in the Qatari judiciary, they will be proved innocent in the appeal," el-Zayyat said. Diplomatic relations between Egypt and Qatar have deteriorated in recent years for reasons including Egyptian objections to the reporting of Qatari-based news TV Al Jazeera. Additionally, Egypt has criticised what it perceives to be Qatari efforts to usurp its role in the region.
