BEIJING China Friday gave stiff jail terms to four people it says organized a mass suicide attempt by followers of the banned Falungong movement on Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

The four were convicted of "intentional homicide" in a trial at Beijing's number one intermediate people's court and sentenced to between seven years and life in jail, Xinhua news agency said.

The court verdict said all four were guilty of "organizing, masterminding, instigating and assisting" a group of seven followers to attempt suicide on January 23.

According to AFP, five people the Chinese authorities say were members of the falungong spiritual movement set themselves on fire, including a 12-year-old girl.

The young girl and her mother died, and the other three suffered horrific burns. Two more people were intercepted by police before they were able to ignite gasoline hidden in sprite bottles.

Liu Yunfang, 57, was jailed for life for producing Falungong pamphlets which promised followers they would achieve Nirvana through self-immolation, said the court.

Wang Jindong, 50, one of the disfigured survivors, was jailed for 15 years for helping to distribute the pamphlets. Both men were also accused of staking out Tiananmen Square ahead of the suicide bid.

Xue Hongjun, a 49-year-old man, was jailed for 10 years. He allegedly saw the group off at a railway station in Henan Province as they headed for Beijing. Xinhua said his last words were "see you in heaven".

Liu Hongjun, 49, a Beijing resident, was sentenced to seven years in jail for giving the Henan practitioners shelter in her home in the capital. She also helped the group to obtain the sprite bottles used to carry the gasoline, said Xinhua.

Another woman, 56-year-old liu Baorong, was convicted of intentional homicide but released without penalty.

Liu accompanied the group onto the square intending to commit suicide but was tackled by police as she tried to light her gasoline-filled sprite bottle.

Xinhua said she suffered no punishment because she confessed and helped to expose other criminal elements in the case.

The Falungong movement abroad has consistently denied the five were followers of the sect and has accused China of setting up the incident to discredit the movement.

Hong Kong-based Falungong spokesman Kan Hung-Cheung said the movement was opposed to suicide and that neither those who attempted suicide nor those put on trial were followers of the movement.

"All along, this has been an ugly performance created by (president) Jiang Zemin to frame and slander Falungong and be an excuse for his crackdown on Falungong," he told AFP.

China intensified its crackdown against the quasi-Buddhist sect in the aftermath of the self-immolations with a grisly propaganda campaign showing horrific footage of the blackened burn victims writhing in agony.

The Falungong movement says the violent campaign to crush the group has been stepped up since the incident with thousands of followers packed off to labor camps where they are pressured to denounce the movement.

China banned the Falungong movement in July 1999 and accused it of being an "evil cult" that had caused the deaths of hundreds of people by advising them to forsake medical treatment in line with the group's teachings.

The movement used to regularly assemble hundreds of followers in Tiananmen Square to protest the ban, but the protests have tailed off in the aftermath of the suicides with the group blaming the harsher crackdown.

Human rights groups estimate that hundreds of Falungong followers have been sentenced to jail terms and tens of thousands sent to labor camps. More than 100 are reported to have died from brutality in police detention.

Falungong combines Buddhist-based philosophy and slow-motion meditation exercises. It teaches the cultivation of a wheel of energy inside the belly of each participant which can bring health and spiritual well-being.