The capital\'s Leninsky District Court sentenced three Kyrgyz citizens and one Kazakh citizen to long prison terms for preparing a terror attack against the U.S. air base at Bishkek\'s Manas airport, defense attorneys told Interfax. The four men were detained by Kyrgyz security officers in September 2003, on suspicion of planning an attack on the base. Bakyt Batyrbekov, the group\'s leader, was sentenced to 13 years in prison. Ramiz Berdaliyev, Nadyr Ismanaliyev and Akrol Abduvaliyev were given 10-year sentences. Batyrbekov, Berdaliyev and Ismanaliyev, born in the northern Talas region of Kyrgyzstan, had been trained in an Islamic military camp in Pakistan and Islamic schools in Iran. Investigators said that while staying in Peshawar, Pakistan, Batyrbekov was ordered to stage an attack against the anti-terror coalition forces in Bishkek. The U.S. Embassy in Bishkek may have been another target. Batyrbekov returned to Kyrgyzstan, rented an apartment in Bishkek, and started watching the airport and the U.S. base. Investigators who searched his apartment found drawings of bombing devices, maps of Manas airport, a layout of the air base\'s checkpoints, a large amount of aluminum powder, ammunition, an F-1 hand grenade, a small amount of heroin and extremist literature. The Kyrgyz citizens facing the court were found to be members of the banned radical party Hizb-ut-Tahrir. Defense attorneys told the press that their clients were innocent and had changed their stories in court after being subjected to torture. The defense plans to appeal the sentence to the Bishkek City Court. (Interfax)