BEIRUT, Lebanon, Dec. 18 (UPI) -- A Beirut court handed two Lebanese men long prison sentences for their roles in a failed bombing plot that targeted two German commuter trains in 2006.
Jihad Hamad and Youssef al-Haj Deeb on Tuesday were convicted of attempted mass murder, with the former receiving a 12-year prison sentence and the latter a life sentence in absence. Three others were acquitted.
Haj Deep's trial in the western German city of Duesseldorf started Tuesday but is not expected to end anytime soon.
German prosecutors accuse the men of having plotted a failed terror attack; in July 2006 the pair boarded two commuter trains in Cologne with backpacks containing homemade bombs. Due to technical glitches, neither device exploded, but the attempt nevertheless shocked the country, which so far had been spared from a terror incident.
Hamad has since admitted that the bombing attempt was a response to the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad that had been reprinted by several newspapers all over Europe, also in Germany.
