A Saudi court Monday passed death sentences on three men over deadly  attacks in 2003 and 2004 that targeted foreign residents of the kingdom, the official Saudi Press Agency reported. The three were convicted of involvement in a 2003 suicide bombing on a residential compound in the capital Riyadh and in attacks the following year on oil company buildings and a residential compound in the eastern city of Khobar.

Eighteen people were killed in the Riyadh bombing and 22 in the Khobar attacks. Five other defendants received jail terms ranging from 25 to 30 years, the report said. The sentences are the latest to be handed down in a series of terrorism cases coming before Saudi courts.

In September, seven alleged al-Qaeda members received death sentences for abducting, torturing and murdering a foreign national thought to have been US oil worker Paul Johnson, who was killed in 2004. In April, a court handed down death sentences to eight people and ordered 77 others jailed over attacks in Riyadh in 2003. SAPA