Six men from the same family were hanged in Egypt on...

Six men from the same family were hanged in Egypt on after being convicted of the massacre of 22 members of a rival clan two years ago, judicial sources said.
As the men entered the execution chamber, Mamdouh, the son of Tammam Abdul Haleem, asked to be hanged before his father because he did not want to witness his father's death, the sources said. Mamdouh's father had been scheduled to hang first but the executioner complied with the wish of his son, they added.
The hangings followed one of the bloodiest vendetta killings in years in Egypt. The six members of the Abdul Haleem gang were convicted in May 2003 of ambushing members of a rival family in August 2002, slaughtering 22 people and wounding three, in revenge for the killing of one of their own.
They machine-gunned two minibuses carrying members of the Al-Hanashat family in a village near Sohag, a town on the Nile about 400 kilometres (250 miles) south of Cairo.
The attack followed the killing of a Abdul Haleem family member five months earlier. Judicial sources said they reacted impassively as officials re-read their sentences, a standard practice before convicts go to the gallows. The six told prison authorities to distribute their personal belongings to the poor.
Together they also recited a verse from the Muslim holy book, the Koran, which roughly translated as "to Allah we belong and to Him we return."
The court confirmed the sentences against the six in 2003, after they were approved by the mufti or state theologian.