Cairo - An Egyptian military court has sentenced an opposition politician and former newspaper editor to two years in prison for illegally crossing into the Gaza Strip, a source close to Egyptian security said on Wednesday.

The source, who spoke to Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media, said that the military tribunal in the Suez Canal town of Ismailiya on Wednesday found Magdi Hussein, a fiery orator with Egypt's suspended Labour Party, guilty of traveling to Gaza illegally through a smuggling tunnel in January.

Hussein may appeal the sentence, following changes to Egypt's law on military justice, passed in April 2007.

Hussein's court-appointed lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment. A group of human rights lawyers had tried to represent Hussein when the trial began on February 5, but left in protest when judges refused to let all of them in, the Cairo-based Arabic Network for Human Rights Information said in a statement at the time.

Authorities detained Hussein as he returned to Egypt on January 31 after making a highly publicized, week-long trip to the Gaza Strip.

In an interview published in London's pan-Arab daily al-Quds al- Arabi the day before his arrest, Hussein said that expected to be detained or sent back to the Gaza Strip when he attempted to return to Egypt.

Hussein also chronicled his time in the Gaza Strip in daily entries posted to the Labour Party's website after he crossed into the salient, he said, through a hole in the border fence on January 23.

In articles posted on the Labour Party's website, Hussein said he had met with politicians and militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and that he had preached the virtues of armed struggle in Gazan mosques.

Earlier, Hussein said that he three times failed to enter Rafah legally before "a friend" helped him to enter the territory through a hole in the border fence created, he said, when Israeli warplanes bombed the area.

Egyptian security forces last detained Hussein in October, when they intercepted a convoy carrying medical supplies into the Gaza Strip and found him and five other Egyptian Islamist opposition politicians travelling into the strip to protest the Egyptian and Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. (dpa)