A Spanish court sentenced two men to five years each in prison today for their part in a 2002 suicide bombing in Tunisia which killed 21 people, 14 of them German tourists.
An al-Qaeda-linked group calling itself the Islamic Army for the Liberation of Holy Sites claimed responsibility for the bombing outside north Africa's oldest synagogue on the island of Djerba on April 11, 2002.
The court jailed Ahmed Rukhsar, a 41-year-old Pakistani living in Spain, and Enrique Cerda Ibanez, a 43-year-old Spaniard, for collaboration with a terrorist organisation.
The bomber drove a tanker truck filled with cooking gas to the synagogue and blew it up as the German tourists were entering the building, which was virtually destroyed. A synagogue had stood on the site for 1,900 years.
Two French citizens and five Tunisians were also killed in the blast and 30 people were wounded.
According to court papers, Rukhsar and Cerda helped finance the operation by channelling money between al-Qaeda operatives.
Among the operatives with whom Cerda cooperated was Khalid Shaykh Mohammed, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and accused of playing a role in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, the papers said.