Radical cleric Bakri sentenced to life in jail

AFP - Radical Islamic preacher Omar Bakri, who was sentenced to life in prison on charges including inciting murder, told AFP on Friday he would "not spend one day" behind bars.

"I will not hand myself in to any court. I do not believe in the law in Britain as in Lebanon," Bakri told AFP at his home in the northern coastal city of Tripoli a day after the verdict against him.

"I have 15 days to appeal the verdict," he said, adding that he would "not spend one day in prison."

Bakri, a radical Sunni who has praised the September 11, 2001 attacks describing the hijackers as the "magnificient 19", was sentenced to life in prison by a Lebanese military court on Thursday.

He was found guilty -- along with more than 40 other Lebanese, Palestinian and Saudi citizens -- of charges that include inciting murder and belonging to an armed faction, capping a trial that had opened three years ago.

Bakri, who holds Lebanese nationality and lives in Tripoli, failed to show up in court on Thursday when the sentence was read. The other defendants were also sentenced in absentia.

He told AFP that he had not been informed formally the court would issue a verdict and insisted that he was innocent.

"I have no ties to Al-Qaeda, direct or indirect, other than the fact that I believe in the same ideology," he said at his home in the Abi Samra neighbourhood, a hub for radical Islamist groups.

Bakri lived in Britain for 20 years before being banned from the country in 2005 as part of the British government's counter-terrorist measures following the London subway and bus bombings that year.

The cleric sparked outrage in Britain in the wake of the bombings for saying he would not hand over to police Muslims planning to launch attacks.

He has also claimed that former British prime minister John Major and former Russian president Vladimir Putin were "legitimate targets."

Upon his arrival to Beirut in 2005, Bakri was detained by Lebanese authorities but was freed one day later. No charges were pressed against him at the time.

Born in 1960 to a wealthy Syrian family, Omar Bakri began studying Islam at the age of five and at 15 joined the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

Bakri abandoned the Brotherhood a few years later and joined Lebanon's Hizb ut-Tahrir (Arabic for "Party of Liberation"), a movement that aimed to join all Islamic states under one caliphate.

The Sunni cleric split with the group in 1983 and founded his own group, Al-Muhajirun ("The Emigrants"), in Jeddah that year.

When Bakri was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1986, he moved to Britain and gained a following as a preacher there before his expulsion. Al-Muhajirun has also been proscribed under the UK Terrorism Act 2000.

Bakri has two wives and seven children.