BISHKEK -- Three defendants in a high-profile jailbreak in Kyrgyzstan have been sentenced to life in prison.
A court in Bishkek also ruled on June 29 that some property of the three convicts must be seized.
Two more defendants, a man and a woman, were found guilty of providing the jailbreakers with shelter and received four years in jail and a suspended four-year sentence with parole limitations, respectively.
In October, nine convicts, the majority of whom were sentenced on religious-extremism charges, escaped a detention center on the outskirts of Bishkek, killing four prison guards.
Six of the escapees were recaptured shortly afterward, while three were killed in a shoot-out.
Officials said later that two of the recaptured convicts died of heart attacks and another of a brain hemorrhage while in custody. Those accounts of their deaths were viewed with great suspicion.