After an emotional five-week trial that reminded Parisians of this city's vulnerability to terrorism, a special French court has sentenced two members of Algeria's Armed Islamic Group to life imprisonment for their role in three bombings that killed eight people and wounded more than 200 others here in 1995.
The bombings, among eight such attacks around France in the summer and fall of 1995, were claimed by the Armed Islamic Group as reprisals for French support for Algeria's army-backed government. Six bombings occurred in Paris, the worst on July 25, when eight people were killed and 150 wounded in an explosion of a gas canister packed with nails and bolts on a Paris regional train at St.-Michel station.
On Tuesday evening, a seven-judge antiterrorist court convicted Boualem Bensaïd, 34, for placing a bomb in a trash bin near the Maison-Blanche Métro station on Oct. 16 and for complicity in both the St.-Michel bombing and another regional train bombing near the Musée d'Orsay Métro station on Oct. 17. Smaïn Ali Belkacem, 34, was convicted for planting the Musée d'Orsay train bomb. Both men had pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The trial, which was attended by scores of people who had been wounded in the attacks as well as by family members carrying photographs of the eight people killed in the St.-Michel bombing, served to revive memories of the fear that gripped Paris in the second half of 1995 until the police finally detained many of the alleged terrorists. One suspect, Khalid Kelkal, identified as a ringleader, was gunned down by the police near Lyon.
Mr. Bensaïd and Mr. Belkacem, who were arrested in 1995, were among 36 Algerians sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment in 1998 for belonging to a terrorist organization. Since 1995, France has been demanding the extradition from Britain of another Algerian, Rachid Ramda, 33, accused of helping to finance the terrorist group. Britain approved the extradition, but the ruling was reversed by a London court. Mr. Ramda is still in detention in London.
Before the verdict on Tuesday, Benoît Dietsch, one of the defense lawyers, claimed that the prosecution had failed to prove Mr. Bensaïd's complicity in the St.-Michel bombing. Another defense counsel, Guillaume Barbe, said that though the court was under enormous pressure to convict Mr. Bensaïd ''to ease the pain of the victims,'' it should have the courage to acquit him.
The case against Mr. Belkacem rested on a Métro ticket that showed he had left the Musée d'Orsay Métro station just minutes before the bomb blast. His lawyer, Philippe Van der Meulen, did not challenge this evidence, but argued instead that Mr. Belkacem turned radical only after the Algerian government annulled elections likely to be won by the Islamic Salvation Front in 1992. The civil war that followed the cancellation of the elections is estimated to have taken more than 100,000 lives in the past decade.
Continue reading the main story''Without going as far as the act in question, is it not legitimate to want to react, become involved and oppose?'' Mr. Van der Meulen asked.
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