KUWAIT CITY, Dec 27: Six men from a group linked to the Al Qaeda network were sentenced to death by a Kuwaiti court on Tuesday for their roles in deadly clashes with police in January. Three of the men convicted by the criminal court are Kuwaiti nationals, while the other three are Arab bidouns.

A seventh accused, a Kuwaiti, was sentenced to life in prison. The condemned are members of a group linked to Al Qaeda calling itself the “Peninsula Lions Brigades”.

Eight militants were killed in January’s fierce gun battles with Kuwaiti police along with four police officers and two civilians.

Twenty-two other suspects were handed jail terms between four months and 15 years in prison. Among those was a Australian of Arab origin, Talal Qadri, who was sentenced to four years in prison.

The verdict was read out in the absence of all the accused, with lawyers and journalists the only people present in the court.

Judge Hani al-Hamdan also acquitted seven other accused, including an leading Islamist figure, Sheikh Hamed Al-Ali and the Islamist lawyer Osama al-Manawer.

Nouha, the widow of the group’s chief Amer Khleif al-Enezi, who is suffering from cancer, was released on health grounds against a payment of 1,700 dollars.

Her husband died while in police detention, eight days after his arrest on January 31.

Ten of the 37 suspects tried by the Kuwaiti court are still on the run but all of those sentenced to death by the court are in police detention.

The men were accused of forming a fundamentalist group that “plotted to carry out terrorist attacks in Kuwait.”—AFP