Briefly

EGYPT

Nasser’s daughter guilty of defamation

CAIRO — A daughter of former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser has been convicted of defamation for calling his successor, Anwar Sadat, an American agent, a judicial source said yesterday.

Hoda Abdel Nasser was ordered to pay more than $18,000 to Ruqaya al-Sadat, daughter of the Egyptian president assassinated by Islamists in 1981.

Miss al-Sadat filed the lawsuit in 2005 after a weekly publication reported Miss Nasser as saying Mr. Sadat was behind the death of her father and that he worked for U.S. secret services.

SAUDI ARABIA

Rights groups slam fatwa on writers

RIYADH — A group of more than 100 Arab rights groups and intellectuals yesterday condemned a Saudi religious edict calling for the deaths of two writers for apostasy, saying “clerics of darkness” were practicing intellectual terrorism.

Sheik Abdul-Rahman al-Barrak, one of Saudi Arabia’s most revered clerics, said in a rare religious ruling last month that two newspaper columnists should be put to death if they did not renounce their “heretical articles” in public.

The columnists had questioned the Sunni Muslim view in Saudi Arabia that Christians and Jews should be considered unbelievers, which Sheik al-Barrak said implied that Muslims were free to follow other religions. Sheik al-Barrak was backed by a group of 20 other Saudi clerics.

EGYPT

Luxor residents oppose museum plan

LUXOR — Hundreds of residents of the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor clashed with riot police Friday during a protest against government attempts to move them to make room for an open-air museum free of modern buildings.

The government has offered compensation and temporary housing to many of the displaced residents, but some complain the money is insufficient or that they simply do not want to move.

Luxor’s West Bank, on the Nile River, contains the Valley of the Kings and its collection of well-preserved Pharaonic tombs, including King Tutankhamen’s, that draw thousands of tourists daily to the area.

The government plans new excavations in the area, with the goal of turning much of the town into an open-air museum free of modern housing and other structures.

KUWAIT

Top court upholds death for Filipina

KUWAIT CITY — Kuwait’s High Court of Appeal yesterday upheld a death sentence against a Filipina housemaid for killing her employer’s 7-year-old son by slitting his throat, a legal source said.

May Membrini was convicted of killing the boy in January 2007 and attempting to kill his elder brother and sister, who sustained injuries. She later reportedly jumped from the second floor of her employer’s home.

The court ruling is final and needs only to be signed by Kuwait’s emir, Sheik Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, to be implemented. In Manila, the Philippine government said it would continue to work to save the maid’s life.

In December, the emir agreed to commute the death sentence to life in jail for another Filipina maid after a visit by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

From wire dispatches and staff reports