Olympic bomber sentenced to life in prison

A Protestant fundamentalist who carried out the Atlanta Olympic bombings is being sentenced today.

Eric Rudolph, 38, will be sentenced to life in prison without parole for the three blasts.

He received the same sentence last month for the 1998 bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed a police officer and maimed a nurse.

The Olympics bombing killed one woman and injured 111 people.

The blasts in 1997 at an abortion clinic and at a gay nightclub in north Atlanta injured 11 more people.

Around 300 seats have been set aside in the Atlanta court for victims of the bombings.

The outcome of the sentencing hearing was determined by a plea deal.

Rudolph has portrayed himself as a devout Christian, saying the bombings were motivated by his hatred of abortion and a federal government that lets it continue.

He spent five years hiding out in the mountains of western North Carolina, using his training as a soldier to keep him alive as police hunted him down.

He was captured in 2003 while scavenging for food behind a grocery store.

Rudolph had faced a possible death sentence, but federal prosecutors agreed to drop that in exchange for him revealing the location of more than 250lbs of stolen dynamite buried in the North Carolina woods, Sky News reports.