Russian court jails Red Square bomb plot convict for 15 years

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Moscow court on Wednesday convicted a man of participating in a failed plot to carry out a suicide bomb attack in Red Square on New Year's Eve in 2010 and sentenced him to 15 years in prison, the Russian prosecutor general's office said.

The court found that Ilyas Saidov brought two bombs to Moscow from the volatile North Caucasus republic of Dagestan on a bus and delivered them to two women who were to set them off on the square outside the Kremlin, it said.

One of the bombs exploded in a hotel room after being triggered by a spam text message, killing one of the women, according to Russian law enforcement authorities.

Saidov avoided a possible life sentence by confessing to the crime, as well as others he was charged with committing in the North Caucasus, and cooperating with investigators.

Thousands of Russians gather on Red Square to ring in the New Year and watch fireworks.

Russia is fighting an Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus that is rooted in two post-Soviet wars against Chechen separatists, and the militants have sometimes targeted Moscow.

Two women killed 40 people in near-simultaneous suicide bombings in the Moscow subway in 2010, and a suicide bomber killed 38 people at a city airport in January 2011.

(Reporting by Gleb Bryanski; Editing by Jon Hemming)