CAIRO, December 24, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Hosni Mubarak's runner-up in Egypt's first multi-candidate presidential election, fiery young lawyer Ayman Nur, was sentenced Saturday, December 24, to five years in prison in what his camp charged was a political trial.

"Down with Hosni Mubarak" the 41-year-old former legislator and his wife Gamila Ismail shouted before being whisked away by security, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Nur, who went on trial six months ago on charges of forging affidavits for the creation of his Ghad (Tomorrow) party last year, listened to the sentence from behind the bars of the courtroom cage, wearing a white suit.

Two of other co-defendants were sentenced to five years in prison, three to three years and one to 10 years in absentia.

"We are convinced that the Court of Cassation will clear Ayman Nur and we will start the appeal procedure straight away," his lawyer Amir Salem told reporters.

Western diplomats attended the verdict but the Cairo Criminal Court was filled mainly with security agents in civilian clothes.

Police were deployed in front of the cage to prevent journalists from approaching the defendants.

Nur was detained on December 5, even before the verdict was reached, in what his defense team said was evidence of the partiality of the court.

He has always denied the charges and argued that they were trumped up by the regime to undermine his political career, which is now gone with the wind.

After conducting a feisty anti-Mubarak campaign, Nur took the runner-up spot in the country's first pluralist presidential election in September and vowed to up the ante against the ruling elite.

"All this climate of terror give us a clear indication of the kind of sentence that Nur will receive," his wife said when the session opened.

"All these measures were taken against Nur simply because he presents a real challenge to Mubarak and his son" Gamal, the Ghad party said in a statement distributed outside the courtroom.

Some 200 Ghad supporters staged a protest outside the courtroom, led by Mrs Nur, who chanted anti-regime slogans with a loudspeaker from the back of a pick-up truck.

"This court has a dark history, it has always been chosen to try political opponents. This is a political verdict," Nur's lawyer told the court immediately after the sentence was read out.

It was the same court that sentenced prominent US-Egyptian human rights activist Saadeddin Ibrahim to seven years in prison in May 2001.

Nur's supporters cry in despair outside court in Cairo. (Reuters)

Egypt's largest opposition bloc, the Muslim Brotherhood, criticized the five-year prison sentence as "uncivilized" and a political decision, reaffirming conviction of the Ghad party leader's innocence.

"I hope Ayman comes out of this," senior Brotherhood leader Issam El-Aryan told AFP.

"Political rivalries should be handled in a civilized manner," he stressed.

Aryan predicted that the Court of Cassation would acquit Nur.

Winning 88 seats in the month-long legislative polls, the Muslim Brotherhood emerged as the main opposition bloc in the new parliament.

The ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) has maintained its grip on power, winning two-thirds of the 454-seat legislature.

Nur’s success story was shattered by a chain of events over the past two months which he characterizes as nothing less than "political assassination and personal persecution" by the regime.

"Nearly a year after Ayman Nur started his meteoric political rise from a prison cell, the firebrand opposition leader's fierce challenge of Egypt's ruling family has landed him back behind bars," AFP commented on Nur’s sentence.

It was referring to Nur’s first emergence as a major opposition force when he was remanded in custody for six weeks in January over the same forgery charges.

"They will have done absolutely everything to crush and condemn the one who dared to compete with the father and the son," Nur told AFP in a recent interview.

His jailing prompted US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to cancel a trip to Egypt.

Once freed, Nur gave his all to prepare his bid in the country's first pluralist presidential poll last September, emerging as the only serious challenger after a feisty campaign against Mubarak, who eventually won 88 percent of the vote, crossing a "red line".

Nur argued that Mubarak "will have died of old age before the end of his mandate", then declared war on his son Gamal, the influential head of the ruling party's policies committee.

He says the regime tried to smear him with a sex scandal by sending fabricated audio recordings allegedly involving his wife, a former Newsweek journalist.

His Ghad literally fell apart in the interim when a dissident branch of what Nur describes as "government stooges" broke away and sought to topple him.

Each faction could only win a single seat in the legislative elections, spelling the death of a party that was briefly the largest single force in the legal parliamentary opposition.

Nur spent most of time in court instead of campaigning and lost his seat in his Bab Al-Shaaria stronghold in the first round.