Hesham Talaat Moustafa, a property magnate and former member of parliament for the ruling National Democratic Party, was spared the death sentence after a retrial in September.
Muhsen el-Sukkari, convicted of stabbing Suzanne Tamim to death in Dubai in 2008, saw his death sentence reduced to life imprisonment. Both went into trial pleading their innocence.
The killing was seen as an act of revenge after the singer ended a relationship with Moustafa.
“The court should have punished the accused with severity and not compassion in order to comply with what the public prosecutor requested, which is the maximum penalty (death),” the attorney general’s office said in a statement on Wednesday.
Analysts said the reduced sentence was not unusual but that Moustafa’s privileged background was likely to spur talk that Egypt’s courts are more lenient toward the rich elite.
