CAIRO - Two Israelis and a Ukrainian were sentenced to life in prison by an Egyptian court on Monday on charges of smuggling a machinegun and ammunition across the Israeli border into Egypt, a court source said. The Ukrainian and one of the Israelis are in Egyptian custody, while the other defendant was tried in absentia. Security along Egypt's border with Israel, long a conduit for the smuggling of guns and people, was relaxed after the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak following a popular uprising in February 2011, as police presence thinned out across Egypt. According to the court that issued the conviction, the Ukrainian, manager of a tourism company in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh, had ordered the weapon from one of the Israeli defendants, the source said. The other Israeli, who lived in the southern Israeli city of Eilat, brought the weapon into Egypt at the border at Taba in a cross-shaped wooden crate. The machinegun and ammunition were discovered when the crate was placed on an explosives detection machine. The weapon was the sort used by police in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, investigators said.
