Judge Ibrahim Saleh al-Nisf jailed Anatoly Bilashkov and Vassily Pokchov for 25 years – the life term in Qatar – for the February 13 killing of Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a former Chechen president who lived in exile in Doha.

The judge said the court had been "lenient" in not sentencing the pair to death, as the prosecution had called for during the closed-door trial which opened in the Qatari capital on April 11.

Moscow, however, insisted the two were innocent and said it would continue efforts to have Doha release them, while defence lawyer Mohsen Dhiab al-Suwaidi said he would appeal.

Reading out the verdict during a brief public hearing, the judge accused the "Russian leadership" of being behind the killing.

"In August (2003), the Russian leadership gave the order to kill and liquidate former Chechen president Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev," Nisf said.

"The two Russian intelligence officers, who served as diplomats in the Russian embassy in Qatar" worked out "the assassination details", prepared "at security services headquarters in Moscow," he added.

He said the car-bomb came from Saudi Arabia, and that cars from the Russian embassies in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were used, without specifying for what.

Akhmed Zakayev, envoy of the Chechen separatist presidency who attended Wednesday's session, said the verdict "proves that the Russian government practices terrorism".

"While the Russian government accuses me of terrorism, two of its employees are today accused of perpetrating a terrorist act in a foreign country," Zakayev added.

Yandarbiyev's widow, Malika, said she "accepted the verdict" and believed "that the two Russian agents were obliged by the Moscow government to carry out" their act.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking in Jakarta after Wednesday's ruling, denied any part for Moscow in plotting the rebel's death.

"Moscow still considers that the two Russian citizens detained in Qatar had nothing to do with the assassination of Zelimkhan Yandarviyev.

"Respecting Qatar's judicial proceedings, our lawyers will appeal the decision. We will keep up our efforts to quickly return the Russians to their homeland," Russian news agencies quoted him as saying.

And Russian security chief Igor Ivanov, in a statement, accused the Qatari tribunal of "major violations of international and Qatari law".

The defense lawyer said he was "not satisfied" with the verdict and would appeal.

Both men had pleaded not guilty to the car-bomb attack following Muslim Friday prayers that killed Yandarbiyev and wounded his 13-year-old son.

The murder sparked a diplomatic row between the Gulf state and Russia.

Qatar expelled the first secretary of the Russian embassy in March after detaining him along with the agents in connection with the February car bombing.

The expulsion announcement came just hours after two Qatari nationals were arrested by Moscow and returned to Doha in what was seen as a tit-for-tat move.

The two members of the Gulf state's wrestling federation were arrested in transit at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport on February 26 on suspicion of carrying undeclared foreign currency.

Yandarbiyev, who briefly headed Russia's war-torn separatist republic of Chechnya in the mid-1990s, had lived in Qatar for nearly three years with his family and was believed to have raised funds in the Muslim world for Chechen rebels.AFP