A Beirut court sentenced a Lebanese man to life in prison and another to 12 years on Tuesday for their roles in a failed attempt to detonate bombs on German trains in 2006, judicial sources said. One of the two, Youssef al-Haj Deeb, was sentenced in absentia to life in prison - a reduction from an earlier death penalty. He is being held in Germany, where he faces a separate trial that began on Tuesday. Jihad Hamad was handed a 12-year sentence in Beirut. Both were convicted of attempted mass murder. Three other men on trial in Beirut were declared innocent. The German federal prosecutorÂ’s office says Hamad, 22, and Haj Deeb, 23, took suitcases containing propane gas tanks and crude detonators onto two trains in July 2006 heading from Cologne - one to Koblenz and the other to Dortmund. The bombs failed to go off due to technical errors, but they would have caused a significant number of deaths had they exploded, German prosecutors have said. Hamad, who turned himself in to Lebanese authorities in August 2006, had confessed to his role in the plot but claims it was meant to create fear rather than kill, his lawyer has said.