NEW YORK, Oct 18: Four men, alleged to be accomplices of Osama bin laden, America’s number one fugitive, were convicted in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in East Africa were given life sentences without possibility of parole on Thursday.

Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 28, a Tanzanian, was the first to be sentenced in US District Court in Manhattan. He and Mohamed Rashed Al-’Owhali, 24, a Saudi, were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for direct involvement in the bombings.

Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, 36, of Jordan, received the same sentence for conspiracy. Judge Leonard B. Sand ordered each of the men to pay US$33 million in restitution: $7 million to the victims’ families, and $26 million to the US government.

At a pre-sentencing hearing on Wednesday, Judge Sand said the defendants were indigent. But he also suggested that frozen assets might be used for victims, thanks to recent attempts by the Bush administration to choke off the funding of Al Qaida and other terror groups.

Odeh, who had argued at his trial that the United States had provoked the terrorist attacks, was convicted of a lesser role and had been eligible for a lesser sentence.

At the sentencing, defence lawyer Ed Wilford said Odeh “was a soldier in the military wing of Al Qaida.” He said the attack, in Odeh’s view, was an attack against the US for its support of Israel.

Mohamed, convicted of helping build the bomb that struck the embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, declined to address the court. He and Al-’Owhali had faced a possible death penalty in the case, but the jury could not agree on that sentence. Through his attorney, Mohamed said he “wishes to express gratitude to a jury that spared his life.”