Israeli court jails Palestinian as bin Laden agent

An Israeli military court yesterday sentenced to 27 years in prison a Palestinian who it found was trained by al Qaeda to set up sleeper cells for attacks on Israelis.

Prosecutors charged that Nabil Okal, 29, had learned bomb making at an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan in 1998.

They said he was a member of the Islamic group Hamas. Palestinian security officials said Okal had no known militant affiliations.

"I'm innocent!" Okal told reporters outside the military court after it handed down the sentence at a hearing at Erez crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

But defence lawyer Andre Rosenthal told Reuters: "Okal confessed under interrogation to receiving training abroad and this was cross-checked with third-party testimony.

"Still, 27 years still seems a bit much considering that he did not succeed in carrying out an attack. I'd say this exaggerated response is a reflection of world feeling after 9/11," he said.

The trial was the first conducted by Israeli authorities against a Palestinian with alleged links to al Qaeda, blamed by Washington for the September 11, 2001 attacks on US cities.

"(Okal) was trained by al Qaeda and dispatched to set up sleeper cells in the territories," a senior Israeli military officer told Reuters.

Israeli authorities did not disclose if his alleged recruitment efforts, conducted among Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, were successful.

Nor did they say whether Okal or anyone affiliated with him had carried out anti-Israeli attacks before his arrest in June 2000, prior to the start three months later of a Palestinian uprising for statehood.

A military prosecutor said two other Palestinians had been arrested for complicity in the case. One man was jailed for 10 years, and the other was awaiting trial.

Israel usually tries those accused of threatening national security in military or closed courts, which lack some of the due process customary in civil cases. Some defendants in Israeli military courts have complained of poorly qualified counsel and lack of access to evidence against them.