A court has convicted three Iraqi men of plotting to kill Iraq’s then-Prime Minister Ayad Allawi during a visit to Germany in 2004.

The Stuttgart state court convicted Ata Abdoulaziz Rashid, Mazen Ali Hussein and Rafik Mohamad Yousef on Tuesday of attempted participation in murder and of membership in the terrorist organization Ansar al-Islam, a radical Islamic group linked to al-Qaida.

The men were given prison sentences ranging from 7 1/2 to 10 years at the end of a trial that began in June 2006. They were arrested in pre-dawn raids on Dec. 3, 2004.

Prosecutors say the three planned an attack on Allawi at a business forum at a bank in downtown Berlin. A few weeks earlier, Ansar al-Islam had called on a Web site for Allawi to be killed.