A court in Cairo sentenced the 23 Egyptian activists to three years in jail and ordered them to each pay a fine of 10,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,400). The demonstrators were charged with holding an unlicensed protest near the presidential palace in Cairo on June 21 this year.

The protestors were also found guilty of rioting, illegally possessing weapons and damaging property.

Some of these demonstrators had supported the military's overthrow of former president Mohammed Morsi last year, but turned on the new authorities, led by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, as they severely restricted all protests.

Laws passed late last year required demonstrators to give police three days notice before staging a rally and also granted security agencies powers to ban any demonstration they thought was a threat to public safety.

Those jailed include Yara Sallam and Sanaa Seif, who rights group Amnesty International described as "prisoners of conscience."

Defense lawyer Ahmed Ezzat told the AFP news agency that the ruling was "political" and had no legal grounding. The defendants have the right to appeal to a higher court.

Critics saw the anti-protest rules as a government ploy to stifle dissent, but Egypt's government struck back, saying it was the only way to curb violent protests since the ouster of Morsi last year.

The government's massive crackdown on protests over the past year has led to thousands of secular and Islamist protestors being jailed. Several hundred have been killed or sentenced to death.

mg/se (AFP, dpa, AP, Reuters)