Man gets death sentence for tossing friend into Nile

Cairo: An Egyptian man, convicted of murdering his friend by throwing him into the Nile, was handed down a death sentence in a case that gripped the nation.

Last September, the victim, an engineer, disappeared for 11 days after having left his family home in the Delta province of Dakahlia to get money from his friend who owed him some money. His family reported his mysterious death to police, saying his mobile phone had been switched off.

His body was later found floating in the Nile. Police investigations showed that the man, identified as Ahmed Atef, had been thrown by his debt-ridden friend Mohammed into the river.

The suspect was arrested and admitted to having killed Atef to get rid of his requests for retrieving the money.

Mohammed owed Atef 680,000 Egyptian pounds ($43,288) in debts, according to media reports. Atef needed the money for hospital fees as his wife was expecting their second child.

The defendant was later put on trial at a provincial criminal court that Thursday sentenced to him to death after receiving approval from Egypt’s top Islamic authority, the mufti, a routine procedure in cases involving death sentencing.