PARIS – A French court yesterday gave the maximum 10-year prison sentence to the ringleader of an alleged plot to send a suicide bomber into the American Embassy in Paris.

The court also sentenced five other defendants in the case to prison terms of between one and nine years.

The group’s ringleader, Djamel Beghal, 39, and the others were convicted of “criminal association in relation with a terrorist enterprise,” a broad accusation commonly used in terrorism cases in France that allowed for a maximum 10-year sentence.

The defendants all denied any connection to a terror plot, and Mr. Beghal testified that his confession of a plan to send a suicide bomber into the American Embassy was obtained under torture after his July 2001 arrest in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. He was extradited to France two months later and retracted that confession.

Lawyers for Mr. Beghal and Lamel Daoudi, the other leading defendant, said they would file appeals.

The defendants involved in the plot spanned five European countries. The investigation against them opened September 10, 2001 – a day before the Qaeda terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

No solid evidence of a plot was presented at the trial, leaving the panel of three judges to untangle a trail of phone calls, meetings with suspect acquaintances and trips.

Mr. Behgal’s lawyer, Jean-Alain Michel, denounced the trial as a “judiciary parody,” adding: “Proof, we have none. There are no documents, no conversation.”

“If I dare say so, we have our judicial Guantanamo,” Mr. Michel said, referring to the American military base in Cuba where alleged enemy combatants are held.

Prosecutors claimed the plot was concocted in Afghanistan with leading Al Qaeda lieutenant Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in March 2002. At his trial, Mr. Beghal denied ever meeting the Saudi-born Palestinian Arab, said to be a link between Osama bin Laden and many of Al Qaeda’s operational cells.

In Dubai, Mr. Beghal supposedly told Dubai authorities of a plot to target American interests in France and identified a Tunisian accomplice, Nizar Trabelsi, the former professional soccer player who was to enter the American Embassy wearing a bomb belt.

Mr. Beghal said the confession was extracted through torture that he claimed included inserting instruments such as knitting needles into his genitals.

Mr. Trabelsi was convicted in Belgium in September 2003 after admitting to plans to drive a car bomb into a Belgian air base where American nuclear weapons are believed stored.

Mr. Daoudi, 30, received nine years in prison. A computer expert who also trained in Afghanistan, Mr. Daoudi was arrested in Britain, where he fled ahead of a police sweep in France.

According to prosecutors, Mr. Daoudi was to send information about preparations for the embassy attack to Afghanistan via the Internet – and receive the green light for the attack in the same way.

Of the other four defendants, Nabil Bounour, and Abdelkrim Lefkir, both 34, were given six-year prison terms. Mr. Bounour, of Algerian origin, was also forbidden to return to France once his sentence was served. Mr. Lefkir had his civil rights suspended for 10 years, a common punishment in France.

Rachid Benmessahel received a three-year prison term, while Johan Bonte, Mr. Beghal’s brother-in-law, was sentenced to a year behind bars.

Mr. Beghal and Mr. Daoudi, both of Algerian origin, spoke at length during the trial about their religious commitment but denied being Islamic radicals ready to commit terror attacks.

Asked if he considered himself a radical, Mr. Beghal testified: “I am a Muslim and Muslim to the hilt.”