NEW YORK?In a courthouse ringed by shotgun-toting marshals a few blocks from the smoking ruins of the World Trade Center, four disciples of Osama bin Laden were sentenced to life without parole Thursday for the deadly 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

The men were the first to be convicted by a U.S. jury of carrying out bin Laden?s 1998 religious edict to kill Americans wherever they are found.

They got the maximum sentence as expected after U.S. District Judge Leonard Sand called terrorism ?one of the most serious threats to our society?to the society of any civilized nation.?

He also ordered each of the defendants to pay $33 million in restitution, perhaps out of terrorist assets frozen by the U.S. government in recent weeks.

The near-simultaneous Aug. 7, 1998, bombings in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, killed 231 people, including 12 Americans. Nearly two dozen people have been indicted in the case, including bin Laden, who is believed to be in Afghanistan.