Pokchov (L-wearing sports clothes) leaves the courtroom amid tight security (AFP)

DOHA , June 30 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – A Qatari court Wednesday, June 30, sentenced two Russian intelligence agents to life in prison for assassinating a former Chechen president in Doha .

Judge Ibrahim Saleh Al-Nisf jailed Anatoly Bilashkov and Vassily Pokchov for 25 years - the life term in Qatar – after finding them guilty of killing Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a former Chechen president who lived in exile in Doha on February 13.

Reading out the verdict during a brief public hearing, Nisf accused the "Russian leadership" of being behind the killing, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"The Russian leadership issued an order to assassinate the former Chechen leader Yandarbiyev," he said, adding the scheme was "discussed at Russian intelligence headquarters in Moscow ."

Yandarbiyev's widow, Malak, who attended the session, said she "accepted the verdict" and believed "that the two Russian agents were obliged by the Moscow government to carry out" their act.

The verdict "proves that the Russian government practices terrorism," said Ahmad Zakaiev, who presented Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov in the trial.

Happy

Yanderbiyev was killed in car bomb blast in Doha in February

The prosecution had called for the "maximum punishment" - in reference to the death penalty - during the closed-door trial, which opened in the Qatari capital on April 11.

Both men had pleaded not guilty to the car-bomb attack following the Friday prayers that killed Yandarbiyev and wounded his 13-year-old son.

But defense lawyer Dimitri Afanasiev told Reuters the men, who appeared in court in tracksuits and were surrounded by guards, would appeal their sentence and seek a transfer to Russia .

"I'm not surprised by the verdict but I am happy that the judge rejected the prosecution request for the death penalty," he added.

Denial

Moscow insisted that the two agents were innocent and said it would continue efforts to have Doha release them.

" Moscow still considers that the two Russian citizens detained in Qatar had nothing to do with the assassination of Zelimkhan Yandarviyev," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Jakarta .

"Respecting Qatar 's judicial proceedings, our lawyers will appeal the decision. We will keep up our efforts to quickly return the Russians to their homeland," he added.

The assassination had sparked a diplomatic row between the Gulf state and Russia .

Qatar expelled the first secretary of the Russian embassy in March after detaining him along with the agents in connection with the murder.

The expulsion announcement came just hours after the return to Doha of two Qatari nationals arrested by Moscow in what was seen as a tit-for-tat move.

Yandarbiyev, who briefly headed Chechnya in the mid-1990s, had lived in Qatar for nearly three years with his family.

The small mountainous republic of Chechnya has been ravaged by conflict since 1994, with just three years of relative peace after the first war between Russian forces and Chechen fighters ended in August 1996.

In October 1999, some 80,000 Russian troops poured into Chechnya in what Moscow called a lightning-strike "anti-terror operation" but which has since degenerated into a bloody war.

At least 100,000 civilians and 10,000 Russian troops are estimated to have been killed in both wars, but human rights groups have said the real numbers could be much higher.

Thousands of refugees from war-torn Chechnya live in battered tent camps in neighboring Ingushetia and refuse to return home because of continuing insecurity.

In October 2003, the Russian human rights watch-dogs issued  a book documenting hundreds of cases of civilians killed or abducted in Chechnya .

The UN Human Rights Committee slammed in a panel on November 7 the ill-treatment of detainees under interrogation, executions and torture in the republic of Chechnya.