RAMALLAH, April 25: A Palestinian military court convening in President Yasser Arafat’s besieged headquarters on Thursday handed out jail terms to four men for the killing of an Israeli minister, the Palestinian Authority said.

The judge sentenced one of the men to 18 years hard labour for “premeditated killing” and three others to between one and 12 years for charges ranging from harbouring the assassins to failure to alert the Palestinian Authority about the plot.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon responded with derision to news of the hasty trial in Arafat’s headquarters, which has been surrounded by Israeli tanks for over three weeks. Sharon reiterated Israel’s demand for the extradition of the men.

Video footage of the brief trial, held on Thursday morning, showed the judge, Brigadier-General Ribhi Arafat, reading the sentences as three of the defendants stood and a fourth sat on a chair with a bandage on his leg.

Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, an ultranationalist who had advocated deporting Palestinians from the West Bank taken by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war, was gunned down in a hotel in occupied Al Quds in October last year by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The PFLP said the killing was to avenge Israel’s killing of its leader Abu Ali Mustafa in August.—Reuters