Dusseldorf - A Lebanese man convicted of trying to blow up two German trains in 2006 reacted with an obscene hand gesture after receiving a life sentence from the High Court in Dusseldorf on Tuesday.

Youssef al-Hajj Dib displayed two middle finger to photographers after the verdict was announced. He was led from the tightly guarded courtroom to begin serving his sentence for multiple attempted murders.

The 24-year-old self-declared "holy warrior" "planned a terrible bloodbath" and was the Islamist mastermind and perpetrator of "an utterly terrorist act," the court said.

Al-Hajj Dib and a friend planted the bombs on two passenger trains in the Cologne train station on July 31, 2006. His accomplice, Jihad Hamad, was convicted at a separate trial in Lebanon and is serving a 12-year prison term in Beirut.

Dressed in a beige hoodie, the bearded and long-haired al Hajj-Dib sat impassively as presiding Judge Ottmar Breidling read out the verdict.

"The fact it didn't become a terrible bloodbath with a large number of dead can be attributed solely to the accused and his accomplice making an error in constructing the explosive devices," the judge said, dismissing claims by the defence that the bombs were not meant to explode.

"It was your express purpose to kill as many infidels as you could," the judge said.

In order to make the bombs more powerful and increase the suffering and burn injuries to the victims, the defendant had filled gas containers with a mix of petrol and diesel fuel, he said.

The judge presented a disturbing picture of the young man, who he said was inspired by Osama bin Laden, the mastermind who picked three Arab students at German universities as hijack pilots for the Islamist suicide attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001.

Al-Hajj Dib also idolized the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, who beheaded hostages captured by his group in Iraq. Al-Hajj Dib was "deeply shocked" when al-Zarqawi was killed in June 2006.

Videos of beheadings and attacks on US troops fascinated him, although his morbid interests caused many of his friends to turn their backs on him, the judge said.

Al-Hajj Dib, who planned to study electronic science in Germany, wrote poems expressing "admiration for the global jihad." In one of them he described how "our war against you will squelch you. You will be struck by lightning."

"He shared the ideology of the terrorist network al-Qaeda," Breidling said. He was encouraged in his radical views by his family, who flew the black flag of the fundamentalists from their home, he said.

The youngest of 13 children, al-Hajj Dib's views became more radical when he moved to Germany, where he did not feel at home, the judge said.

The publication in early 2006 in Germany of Danish newspaper cartoons that mocked the Prophet Mohammed gave him a reason to exact revenge on the hated West.

He used religious edicts and statements by Islamic scholars to "brainwash" Jihad Hamad into believing that attacks on "infidels" was the duty of every Muslim.

They had originally intended to plant a bomb in a football stadium during the 2006 World Cup in Germany, but gave up the idea because of the heavy security surrounding the event.

Instead they decided to target passenger trains as other Islamist militants did in Madrid and London in 2004 and 2005, causing heavy loss of life.

Al-Hajj Dib admitted planting bombs on the trains, which were destined for the towns of Hamm and Koblenz.

The timers and detonators had worked as planned, but the bombs, concealed in suitcases, failed to explode because the main charge in them, a combination of gases, had been wrongly mixed.

Test showed that if the devices had gone off they would have sent a 15-metre fireball hurtling down the compartments, causing a huge loss of life.

"Germany had never been so close to an Islamist attack," the court ruled, echoing the view of the federal prosecutor's office.

When he was planting bombs, al-Hajj Dib was wearing a replica football shirt of German national team captain Michael Ballack.

After the bombing was thwarted, he flew back to Lebanon where one of his brothers reportedly told him: "God will reward you one day." He later returned to Germany where he was arrested. (dpa)