A French court has sentenced French-Algerian Djamel Beghal to 10 years in prison for masterminding a plot to blow up the US embassy in Paris and jailed five others for varying periods of time.
The six men, all of Algerian origin, are suspected of having links to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden but denied any role in the foiled 2001 plot and said they were not militants.
Beghal (39), received the maximum term as ringleader of a plot that had been under investigation since before the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11th, 2001.
Kamel Daoudi (30), a computer expert deported from Britain in 2001, received a nine-year sentence. He was accused of running logistics and communications in the plot.
Two other members of the group were jailed for six years, another for three years and the last for one year on charges of criminal conspiracy designed to commit an act of terrorism.
The six stood impassively behind bulletproof glass in the Paris courtroom as the judge read out the verdict and sentences one by one.
Beghal had been extradited to France from the United Arab Emirates in late September 2001 after he told police in the Gulf state that he had helped plan a foiled suicide attack on the US embassy in central Paris.
He later retracted his statement, saying he had confessed under "methodical torture".