A Kuwaiti court has sentenced a Filipino to life in prison for killing a Canadian aircraft engineer in October last year.

Teddy Tomaro was found guilty of gunning down Luc Ethier, who worked with US forces in Kuwait, in a busy market area on the outskirts of Kuwait City on 10 October.

The 36-year-old Canadian died on the spot after being hit by three bullets, while his wife, Mary-Jane Bitos, who was with him at the time, was wounded in the attack.

This is a farce - we cannot throw innocent people in jail without conclusive evidence

Defence lawyer Abdul-Majid al-Khraibet

Bitos, also from the Philippines, was acquitted of conspiracy to murder, but sentenced to three years for giving false testimony.

There had been initial fears that the shooting of Ethier and his wife was related to the US war against terrorism and the military offensive launched in Afghanistan just days before.

Bitos had earlier identified a Kuwaiti Islamist as the killer, triggering a security scare for Westerners throughout the region.

She maintained during the trial that Majid al-Mutairi was the man she saw pulling the trigger.

But Kuwaiti authorities later arrested Tomaro, a building maintenance technician, Bitos and four other Filipinos.

'Confession'

Tomaro had apparently confessed to killing Ethier as part of a conspiracy by the defendants to collect life insurance money, lawyers and diplomats said.

But a close friend of Ethier's testified at the trial that Bitos was not the beneficiary of any of the two insurance policies the victim had.

The engineer, who worked for US defence contractor DynCorp in Kuwait's Ahmed al-Jaber air base, had a Canadian policy to be paid out to his mother and a local insurance policy to be paid to a former girlfriend.

Defence lawyers, who are to launch an appeal for Bitos, called the trial a "farce", asking how Bitos could have agreed to kill her husband while not knowing about the insurance policy.

Tomaro and Bitos pleaded not guilty to the murder and said they had confessed earlier under duress.

It is unclear whether Tomaro will appeal.

The four other defendants were cleared of conspiracy to murder.