A French court on Tuesday sentenced six French-Algerian men for up to 10 years in prison for their role in a 2001 plot to attack the US Embassy in Paris, closing the books on one of France's most serious terrorist cases.
The plot, in which a suicide bomber was to have driven a minivan packed with explosives into the embassy in downtown Paris, was discovered in July 2001 when police in Dubai detained the group's leader, Djamel Beghal, on his way back to France from Afghanistan.
Beghal has since said that he was tortured into making statements that gave the broad outlines of the plot and led to the arrest of others in France, Belgium, Britain and the Netherlands.
PHOTO: EPA
The plot is one of three major Islamic terrorist operations that French intelligence and police officials have foiled in recent years -- the others were a plan to attack a crowded market in Strasbourg in December 2000 and a 2002 plot to attack the Russian Embassy or other targets in Paris with a chemical bomb. Fourteen people have been sentenced to prison in the Strasbourg plot. Those arrested in the Russian embassy plot are awaiting trial.
Intelligence officials say the three plots show a disturbing progression: the first two were planned by young men who had received terrorist training in Afghanistan, while the third involved young men who had trained in Chechnya. Most recently, French intelligence services are focusing on young French Arabs who are going to Iraq, fearing that they, too, may return with terrorist plans.
All of the people sentenced on Tuesday insisted they were innocent of anything more than strong religious faith.
Two of the five men were imprisoned for six years, another for three years and the last for one year on charges of criminal conspiracy with an intent to commit a terrorist act.
A Tunisian-born former professional soccer player, Nizar ben Abdelaziz Trabelsi, who was to have been the suicide bomber in the plot, is already serving a 10-year sentence in Belgium where he was convicted in 2003 of a separate plot against a NATO military base.
Beghal, 39, received the maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment as leader of the plot. Counting time already served, he will be released in just more than six years.
His lawyer, Jean-Alain Michel, said Beghal would probably appeal the conviction, saying that the justice system wanted to make an example with the case but that the case was "empty."
Kamel Daoudi, 30, a computer expert convicted for handling the plot's logistics and communications, was sentenced to nine years.
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