Jordan sentenced an Iraqi Kurd suspected by Washington of links to al Qaeda to 15 years in prison on Wednesday after finding him guilty of helping to plan attacks on US targets in the kingdom.
The sentence was delivered in absentia against Muslim cleric Mullah Krekar, who has refugee status in Norway. It comes a day after Norway's public prosecutor dropped a probe into Krekar after raising concerns about the evidence against him.
Krekar, 47, is the founder of the Ansar al-Islam group and denies any links to terrorism or al Qaeda. Krekar, whose real name is Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad, says he stepped down as leader of Ansar al-Islam in May 2002.
He was sentenced by a Jordanian state security court along with seven Jordanian militants who are on the run. They were also handed 15 years of hard labour in absentia.