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The court also sentenced Port Said's former security chief, Maj. Gen. Essam Samak, to 15 years in prison. General Samak was the most senior of nine security officials tried for their part in the riot. Another police official, a colonel, was also sentenced to 15 years. Seven others were acquitted, a decisionthat led enraged protesters to torch the soccer federation headquarters and a police club in Cairo in protest.

Judge Sobhi Abdel-Maguid, who read the verdict at a Cairo courthouse, sentenced five more defendants to life in prison and eight others — besides General Samak and the police colonel — to 15 years. Six defendants received 10-year terms, two more got five years and a single defendant received a 12-month sentence. A total of 28 people were acquitted.

The trial has been the source of some of the worst unrest in recent weeks to hit Egypt, which is already grappling with mass political protests and a crumbling economy. After the 21 people — most of them fans of Port Said's Al-Masry club — were first sentenced to death on Jan. 28, riots erupted in the city that left some 40 people dead, most of them shot by police.

Shortly after the verdict was announced, protesters who were apparently fans of Cairo's Al-Ahly club went on a rampage, torching a police club nearby and storming Egypt's soccer federation headquarters before setting it ablaze. The twin fires sent plumes of thick black smoke billowing out over the Cairo skyline.

Many residents of Port Said, which is on the Mediterranean at the northern tip of the Suez Canal, have seen the trial as unjust and politicized, and soccer fans have felt that authorities were biased in favor of Al-Ahly, Egypt's most powerful club.

The bloodshed unleashed by the verdict in January had many in Egypt bracing for the possibility of more violence following Saturday's sentencing, although both Port Said and Cairo were calm immediately following the verdict, which was broadcast live on Egyptian TV.

The Feb. 2012 riot followed a league match between Al-Masry and Cairo's Al-Ahly club, with Port Said supporters setting upon the visiting fans after the final whistle. The deadly melee is Egypt's worst soccer disaster.

In Port Said, a city that has for weeks been in open rebellion against the government of President Mohamed Morsi, several hundred people, many of them relatives of the defendants, gathered outside government offices to vent their anger.

Port Said has been the center of the heaviest violence in the latest wave of unrest, which began on Jan. 25, when hundreds of thousands across the country marked the second anniversary of the start of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak's government two years ago.

Cairo, the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, and several cities in the Nile Delta north of the capital have all been swept up in the unrest as well.