An Algerian court sentenced 12 Islamist militants to death Wednesday and two more to life imprisonment for their involvement in a 2008 bombing that killed a Frenchman and his driver.
The APS news agency said the accused were all members of Katibat el-Arkam, the most dangerous branch of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and were behind several attacks in the Boumerdes region 50 kilometres east of Algiers.
Those given the death penalty are all on the run and were sentenced in absentia by Algiers criminal court, while the two present in court were sentenced to life.
All were found guilty of “forming an armed terrorist group and premeditated voluntary homicide”.
