PARIS, 16 March 2005 — A French court sentenced a French-Algerian man to 10 years in prison yesterday for plotting a suicide attack on the US embassy in Paris and jailed five accomplices for one to nine years.

Djamel Beghal, 39, received the toughest term possible under French law as the ringleader of the foiled plot in 2001.

Kamel Daoudi, 30, a computer expert, received a 9-year sentence after being accused of running logistics and communications.

The six men, all of Algerian origin, are suspected of having links to Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden but denied the charges of criminal conspiracy designed to commit an act of terrorism.

Two other members of the group were jailed for 6 years, another for 3 years and the last for 1 year.

Investigators found that the proposed suicide bomber was a Tunisian man, now in jail in Belgium.

The six stood impassively behind bulletproof glass in the Paris courtroom as the judge read out the verdict and sentences one by one.

None of them spoke or showed any sign of emotion as the judge said: “The court declares you guilty”.

Lawyers for Beghal and Daoudi said they would appeal against their clients’ sentences. “Djamel Beghal’s confession was wrung out of him and was never confirmed by the facts,” said Beghal’s lawyer, Jean-Alain Michel.

Beghal was 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 just off the Champs Elysees in central Paris.

He later retracted his statement, saying he had confessed under “methodical torture”.

Daoudi, who once worked in an Internet cafe in a Paris suburb, also denied involvement in any attack plot. But he wrote to a French television channel from his prison cell in September 2002 to justify the Sept. 11 attacks.

Investigators found the suicide attack was supposed to have been carried out by Tunisian-born former professional soccer player Nizar ben Abdelaziz Trabelsi.

Trabelsi was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a court in Brussels in 2003 for plotting to blow up a NATO military base in Belgium on behalf of Al-Qaeda.

Trabelsi publicly confessed to plotting that attack, but not to the Paris plot.

The six sentenced said they were friends, not a terror group.

The prosecution said Beghal visited training camps in Afghanistan in 2000 where he initially told investigators he met Abu Zubaydah, a senior Al-Qaeda official arrested in Pakistan in 2002.

It also accused Beghal of having links with London-based Syrian cleric Abu Qatada, whom Britain says inspired the Sept. 11 plotters.

Beghal told the court he met Qatada in Germany in 1997, but did not share his ideas.

Beghal was also accused of recruiting members for his network in the southern suburbs of Paris, including his brother-in-law Johann Bonte, who received a one-year sentence.

Beghal is also suspected of founding a cell in the Netherlands.

Daoudi, who has a degree in mechanical engineering, denied keeping contacts with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, saying he had texts by a senior Al-Qaeda official on his computer hard disk simply because he was curious about them.