DUSSELDORF, Germany, Nov. 26 (UPI) -- An admitted member of al-Qaida who claims to have been Osama bin Laden's bodyguard was sentenced to four years in jail by a German court Wednesday.
Shadi Abdellah, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, was found guilty of membership of a terror group and falsifying passports, the BBC reported.
Abdellah, 27, was one of nine suspected extremists arrested in Germany in April 2002 on suspicion of plotting terror attacks on two Jewish restaurants in Dusseldorf and a Jewish community center in Berlin.
They said Abdellah had ordered a pistol with a silencer and a crate of hand grenades, but added their efforts to prosecute other suspected extremists have been helped by Abdellah's descriptions of his experiences in an al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan, where he says he served as bin Laden's bodyguard in early 2000.
Abdellah was also a witness in the trials of two Sept. 11 suspects in Germany, helping place both in Afghanistan prior to the attacks on the United States.
