It was meant to be the historic trial of a dictator brought to justice by his long-suffering people, but the case against Egypt's ex-president Hosni Mubarak has verged on the farcical as prosecutors and lawyers struggle to rise to the occasion.

From the start of the trial on August 3, lawyers representing Mubarak's victims drained the proceedings of gravitas as they jostled for the chance to hold forth on live television.

Thousands rallied outside Egypt's defense ministry on Friday demanding the military rulers' ouster on the eve of a planned civil disobedience campaign marking Hosni Mubarak's overthrow a year ago.

During the day, several groups of protesters converged near the ministry building, as the security forces blocked off access with barbed wire and tanks.

A year after Egypt overthrew Hosni Mubarak, the poor state of the once-growing economy of the Arab world's most populous nation poses a threat to its restive transition to democracy.

With an estimated growth rate of one to two percent -- compared with between five and seven percent in past years -- the government is looking to the International Monetary Fund and donors to fend off a possible social explosion.

The United States issued a correction Thursday saying it has not yet obtained a document outlining the formal charges against U.S. citizens working for pro-democracy groups in Egypt.

"Yesterday, I implied that we had the document and that we needed to translate it and read it. It turns out that that was inaccurate," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters.

Egyptian Bedouin kidnapped two police officers and 17 conscripts in Sinai on Thursday after a tribesman was killed in a shoot-out with police, security officials said.

The officials said the Bedouin took the policemen at gunpoint after attacking their station near the border with Israel in the increasingly restive peninsula.

A German couple and their child drowned in a tourist submarine accident on Thursday off Egypt's Red Sea resort town of Hurghada, security officials told AFP.

The victims were a German man, his wife and child, they said.

Egyptian judges probing alleged illegal foreign funding of non-governmental organizations on Wednesday accused domestic and foreign groups, including American ones, of illegally meddling in politics.

The NGOs are operating "without license," and their work "constitutes pure political activity and has nothing to do with civil society work," Judge Sameh Abu Zeid told a press conference.

Egypt's interior minister denied on Tuesday that police had fired birdshot at protesters in deadly clashes last week between security and demonstrators, despite testimonies from medics and witnesses.

At least 15 people have been killed in Cairo and the canal city of Suez since violence erupted near the interior ministry on Thursday sparked by deadly football-related clashes, the health ministry said.

Ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak missed a hearing on Tuesday for the first time since his trial opened last August, after a sand storm prevented his helicopter from taking off, the chief judge said.

The veteran strongman has attended every previous hearing in his trial on charges of corruption and ordering the killing of protesters during the mass demonstrations that forced him from power last February.

Candidates for Egypt's first presidential election since the ouster of veteran leader Hosni Mubarak can start registering from March 15, a month earlier than expected, the head of the elections committee said on Monday.

"Registration for the presidential election will begin on March 15," Farouq Sultan said, according to the state-run MENA news agency.