2 Lebanese sentenced to 15 years for bomb plots in Baku

An Azerbaijani court has found two Lebanese men guilty of plotting to bomb the Israeli and US embassies in the capital Baku and sentenced each of them to 15 years in prison.

"Lebanese citizens Ali Karaki and Ali Najmeddin were sentenced to 15 years each," a court spokesman told AFP on Monday.

The two were said to have been planning attacks on the Israeli and US embassies and the strategic Gabala missile-detection radar station in northern Azerbaijan.

The attacks were to have been carried out in 2008, but special services uncovered the plans and neutralized the group, the court was told.

In June, 20 members of the Wahhabi sect were sentenced to between 2 and 18 years in prison on suspicion of assaults on the US and British embassies.

In December 2007, 15 members of another alleged terrorist group were sentenced to long prison terms for a foiled coup plot.

The former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan is mostly Shia, although its pro-US hereditary 'presidential' government is strictly secular.

The government of President Ilham Aliyev, son of the long-serving former president Heydar Aliyev, has been criticized for driving some of the youth of the country toward extremism with its heavy-handed confrontation with dissent.