Egyptian authorities have charged 14 men with planning to recruit young men to fight Israel alongside the Palestinians and blow up a law courts complex in the Nile Delta, prosecution sources said on Friday.

The men belong to a jihadist group based in the Delta city of Tanta and had been in detention for questioning for three months without charge, the sources said.

The independent Cairo newspaper Al Masry Al Youm said on Friday the leader of the group was a veterinarian called Sami Mohamed Sadek.

	Advertisement

According to the charge sheet, the group had already sent some people to Sudan for guerrilla training, the paper said. Some of them died in Sudan of disease, it said.

The newspaper said members of the group denied all the charges.