A Cairo court on Wednesday handed down jail terms of up to 15 years to 26 defendants it convicted of working for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah to carry out attacks in Egypt. In a trial which reflected Egypt's tense ties with the Shiite militant group, the 22 accused who were in the dock received jail terms of between six months and 15 years, after calls from prosecutors for the death penalty. Three of the four defendants on the run, including the alleged Lebanese head of the Hezbollah cell, Mohammed Qabalan, were handed life sentences. The fourth received a lesser prison term, lawyers said. The 26 were convicted of plotting attacks against ships in the Suez Canal and on tourist sites, among other charges. Most were detained between late 2008 and January 2009. The defendants had said in a hand-written letter obtained by selfnews that they never planned attacks in Egypt but had tried to help the Gaza Strip's Palestinian Islamist Hamas rulers who have close ties with Hezbollah. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri said after the verdicts that Beirut would seek to resolve the issue calmly and away from the glare of publicity. 'This is an Egyptian court case that has its own laws and rules,' he told reporters in Beirut, speaking in English. 'We would like that our relationship with Egypt stays a relationship with Egypt. We will solve this issue calmly.' But he also said, in Arabic: 'We will, hopefully, have contacts with (Egypt's Foreign) Minister (Ahmed) Abul Gheit to see how we can resolve this matter.' There was no immediate reaction from Hezbollah. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah admitted after the arrests were publicised in April that he sent a senior commander, Mohammed Yusef Mansur, alias Sami Shihab, to Egypt to support Palestinian militants in Gaza. But Judge Adel Abdul Salam Gomaa rejected the defence case, ruling that the defendants were not simply acting in support of Hamas but had planned to carry out attacks on Egyptian soil. 'Is targeting ships in the canal support for the Palestinian cause? Is preparing explosives and targeting tourist resorts support for the Palestinians?' the judge asked. 'Hezbollah's members rant that they came to Egypt to support the Palestinian cause and they dare to posture against what Egypt has given for the Palestinian people and cause,' he said. During the trial, prosecutors put on show explosives, including suicide belts, that they said police had seized from the defendants. Lawyers for Mansur acknowledged he had proposed to carry out attacks against Israeli targets in Egypt in retaliation for the February 2008 assassination in Damascus of Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughniyeh. But the plan had been rejected by the Iranian-backed movement's leadership in Lebanon. The defence lawyers said that Mansur had instead admitted to training recruits to carry out attacks but only inside Israel and the Palestinian territories. Mansur himself told selfnews during a trial break that he and the other defendants had been tortured into confessing, an accusation denied by police. After the verdict, defence lawyer Abdelmoneim Abdel Maqsud challenged the legitimacy of the court, a special tribunal set up under Egypt's three-decade- old state of emergency. 'This is a political trial that was taken to a court that offered no guarantee of justice,' he said. The trial reignited a war of words between Egypt, Hezbollah and its Iranian backers. Egypt, which has no formal diplomatic ties with Shiite Iran, accuses Tehran of backing the alleged plot, while Iran and Hezbollah charge that Egypt contrived the case against the men. During the devastating Israel-Hamas war of December 2008-January 2009, Cairo responded angrily to a speech by Nasrallah urging Egyptians to protest and army officers to resign over its refusal to permanently open its border with Gaza 