Algerian-born Frenchman Adlène Hicheur sentenced to five years for exchanging emails with alleged al-Qaida contact

This article is more than 8 years old

This article is more than 8 years old

A French court has sentenced an Algerian-born nuclear physicist to five years in prison for his role in plotting terrorism with al-Qaida's north African affiliate.

Adlène Hicheur, a former researcher at Switzerland's Cern laboratory, was convicted on Friday of "criminal association with a view to plotting terrorist attacks".

Hicheur, who has been in custody since he was arrested in October 2009, could have received up to 10 years in prison.

The 35-year-old scientist and his defenders claim he was a victim of overzealous French anti-terror laws and that he explored ideas on jihadist websites but never took any concrete step toward terrorism.

Speaking after the judgment, Hicheur's lawyer Patrick Baudouin called the verdict "scandalous".

Hicheur has yet decide whether to appeal against the verdict. If he does not, with time off for good behaviour, he "should be out rather quickly", added Baudouin.

The case centred on about 35 emails between Hicheur and an alleged contact with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb through Mustapha Debchi, who tried to convince him to carry out a suicide bombing. Hicheur declined, but in one response suggested striking at the barracks of a battalion of elite Alpine troops in the eastern town of Cran-Gevrier.

Hicheur claimed he was on morphine for a herniated disc and was going through a personal "zone of turbulence" when he wrote an email in 2009 that advocated an attack on the barracks.

The prosecutor Guillaume Portenseigne rejected his claims of a lack of lucidity and characterised the defendant as "a man who had everything going for him … but just got led astray in a radical jihadist Islam".

At the two-day trial in March, the prosecutor called Hicheur "a budding terrorist" who only needed a "determining meeting" to slip into concrete action.

Hicheur's lawyer argued that "everything has been done to demonise" his client, "to make him into … France's most dangerous terrorist, potentially susceptible to participate in a bombing".

Hicheur's defenders said recent terror attacks in France did not help his case.

In an apparently unrelated case in March, police say another young man of Algerian descent killed three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three paratroopers in the cities of Toulouse and Montauban and claimed ties to al-Qaida. Mohamed Merah, 23, died later in a shootout with police.