A Cairo criminal court has sentenced 43 civil society activists to one to five years in prison for charges of receiving illegal foreign funding.

The court granted some of the defendants the option of paying a fine of 1,000 Egyptian pounds for a three-year deduction of the sentence.

Forty-three Egyptians and foreigners were rounded up after the uprising and accused of receiving illegal funding from abroad and without a license.

The American defendants were sentenced in absentia, as all but one of them were able to flee the country last year.