Egypt sentences militants to death

An Egyptian court has passed death sentences on three members of a fundamentalist group, the Gamaat al-Islamiya; they'd been convicted of killing twenty-six policemen in a string of attacks in the early 1990s.

Only one of the accused was in court -- the other two were tried in their absence.

The BBC Middle East correspondent says the Egyptian authorities have pressed ahead with the trials of Islamic militants despite an offer from jailed leaders of the radical movement to call off the violence and engage in dialogue.

President Hosni Mubarak has ruled out such dialogue saying the militants were agents who were manipulated from abroad.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service