A Norwegian court has convicted and sentenced two men for planning to bomb a Danish newspaper that published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

The court in Oslo sentenced Norwegian citizen Mikael Davud, a member of China's Uighur minority and considered the leader of the plot, to seven years in prison. The court also sentenced Shawan Sadek, an Iraqi Kurd living in Norway, to three-and-a-half-years in jail.

Prosecutors said the two had planned to attack the Jyllands-Posten newspaper together with al-Qaida, and also plotted to murder one of the cartoonists.

A third defendant, David Jakobsen, an Uzbek national, was acquitted of terror charges, but sentenced to four months in prison for helping the others acquire explosives.

The three men were arrested in July 2010 and pled not guilty to the charges. Davud admitted to planning an attack, but said it was directed at Chinese interests in Norway and not at Jyllands-Posten.

The publication of 12 caricatures of Muhammad by Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard in 2005 outraged Islamists and provoked violent Muslim protests around the world. One cartoon showed Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse.