KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 27 ― A military jury at Guantánamo Bay has sentenced two Malaysians to an additional five years in confinement yesterday for conspiring in the 2002 terrorist bombing that killed 202 people in Bali, Indonesia.

A jury of five US military officers, was assembled to decide a sentence in the 20-to-25-year range.

After deliberating for about two hours yesterday, they returned with a sentence of 23 years, reported the New York Times correspondent in Guantanamo Bay.

The plea bargain agreement reached with the duo earlier had helped avert lengthy litigation and reduced the jail sentence to about five years from the recommended 23 years by the jury.

Both Mohammed Farik Amin and Mohammed Nazir Lep could be freed by 2029. Both have been held in confinement in the United States since the summer of 2003.

Prior to the decision by the jury, the next-of-kin of the Bali bombing victims had testified over the week at the military court.

The US military judge Lt. Col. Wesley A. Braun ruled they could return in five years after cutting 311 days off Mohammed Farik’s sentence and 379 days off Mohammed Nasir’s because prosecutors missed court deadlines for turning over evidence to defence lawyers as they prepared their case.

Both men who are now detained at Guantanamo had pleaded guilty to conspiring in a pair of suicide bombings on the resort island of Bali.

The report quoted Mohammed Nazir’s lawyer Brian Bouffard as saying: "The pretrial agreement contemplates the possibility of repatriation before the sentence is complete.”

When they are returned, he added, it will be to Malaysia’s state-run deradicalisation programme and a lifetime of monitoring by national security authorities.

They have been charged alongside Indonesian Encep Nurjaman, also known as Hambali. Last October The New York Times reported Mohammed Farik and Mohammed Nazir had reached agreements with prosecutors at Guantanamo Bay to charges of being accessories to the terrorist attacks in Bali, and hence separating them from Hambali’s case.

In pleading guilty, Mohammed Farik and Mohammed Nazir agreed to testify against Hambali, the former leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah movement and seen as the mastermind behind the deadly Bali bombing. ― Bernama