An Austrian court has convicted a leading neo-Nazi and two accomplices of glorifying Nazism through a website and sentenced them to prison terms of up to nine years.

Gottfried Kuessel was given a nine-year prison sentence Thursday for being the founder of the "Alpen-Donau" website. He already spent time in prison in the 1990s on conviction of trying to form a successor to the Nazi party.

The two others - Felix Binder and Wilhelm Anderle - were sentenced to seven and 4 1/2 years respectively.

The website is no longer active, but defied years of Austrian efforts to shut it down because it was housed on a U.S. server.

Austrian officials said that left their hands tried because of U.S. free speech laws. Austria bans glorification of the Nazi era.