CAIRO, June 26: An Egyptian court sentenced a newspaper editor who has repeatedly criticised President Hosni Mubarak to one year in jail on Monday for defaming the head of state, court sources said.

They said Ibrahim Eissa, editor of the anti-government weekly Al-Dustour newspaper, received a one-year sentence for publishing an article in April detailing a lawsuit against the president and his family.

That lawsuit had accused Mubarak of selling off state enterprises too cheaply and squandering foreign aid.

Eissa’s front-page columns have regularly attacked both Mubarak, president since 1981, and his family.

Two other defendants in Monday’s defamation case, another Al-Dustour journalist and the man who filed the original lawsuit against Mubarak, also received one-year jail terms.

All three were to remain free on bail of 10,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,700) pending an appeal.

The Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights expressed concern over the ruling, saying that giving jail terms to journalists would ‘shackle freedom of the press in Egypt’.—Reuters