Deposed Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak's sons, already on trial for corruption with their father, will face a new separate case for alleged corrupt stock market dealings, state media reported Wednesday.

The official Nile Television reported that Alaa and Gamal Mubarak would go on trial in a criminal court with seven other defendants. They and their father are facing a verdict on June 2 on corruption charges in the first trial.

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate Mohammed Mursi sought on Tuesday to reassure women and Coptic Christians, who fear a conservative Islamist could threaten their freedoms.

"Our Christian brothers, let's be clear, are national partners and have full rights like Muslims," said Mursi in a press conference.

Egypt's landmark presidential election on Monday narrowed to a contest pitting a Muslim Brotherhood candidate against a Mubarak-era prime minister, the country's electoral commission said.

Announcing the results, commission chief Farouq Sultan said: "No candidate won an outright majority, so according to Article 40 of the presidential election law, there will be a run-off between Mohammed Mursi and Ahmed Shafiq."

Egypt's top court is expected to rule on June 11 in a key case examining the constitutionality of a law barring Mubarak-era officials from running for office, the Al-Ahkbar newspaper reported on Monday.

Citing unnamed judicial sources, the newspaper said "the Supreme Constitutional Court will rule on the constitutional challenge to the political isolation law on June 11."

A criminal court has convicted one of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's closest aides of corruption and jailed him for seven years, Egypt's official news agency said Sunday.

Sunday's ruling also fined Zakaria Azmi 36.3 million pounds ($6 million).

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who is leading a delegation monitoring Egypt's first post-revolt presidential election, said on Saturday the process was "encouraging" despite unprecedented constraints.

"I would say that these (elections) have been encouraging to me," he told a news conference in Cairo, but added that his Carter Centre had "constraints placed on us as witnesses that have never been placed on us before."

The apparent winners of the first round of Egypt's first free presidential election, one from the Muslim Brotherhood and one Hosni Mubarak's last premier, were reaching out to the losing candidates on Saturday ahead of a June run-off.

Final votes were still being counted, but unofficial results suggested that the top two vote-getters out of 12 candidates were the Brotherhood's Mohammed Mursi and Ahmed Shafiq, a holdover from the regime of ousted president Mubarak.

Egyptian Islamist candidate Abdel Moneim Abul Fotouh on Friday urged his supporters to "confront the corrupt regime," in an implicit appeal against Mubarak-era prime minister Ahmed Shafiq.

His statement came after figures showing that Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Mursi and Shafiq appeared to have won the first round of Egypt's presidential vote, setting them up for a run-off.

Egypt looks set for a run-off presidential vote between the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Mursi and Mubarak-era minister Ahmed Shafiq, pitting the Islamists who helped oust a dictator against his last premier.

A run-off between Shafiq and Mursi will further polarize a nation that rose up against president Hosni Mubarak's authoritarianism 15 months ago but has since suffered a spike in violence and a declining economy.

Egypt wrapped up two days of polling Thursday in a landmark presidential election that pitted stability against the ideals of the uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak's rule but the hard-fought contest threatened to go to a runoff.

The count began immediately after polling stations closed at 9:00 pm (1900 GMT), with for the first time an unknown outcome that may well force a second round between the two frontrunners next month.