Two men jailed for sending parcel bombs to Celtic manager Neil Lennon and other high-profile supporters of the club have lost an attempt to have their convictions overturned.

Trevor Muirhead, 44, and Neil McKenzie, 43, were jailed for five years in April last year for conspiring to assault Lennon, former MSP Trish Godman and the late QC Paul McBride by sending devices they believed were capable of exploding and causing severe injury.

McKenzie, from Saltcoats, and Muirhead, from Kilwinning, both in Ayrshire, tried to have their convictions quashed at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh, where a hearing in the case was held in December.

Their legal teams argued there was insufficient evidence to allow the jury at the trial to find that the pair believed the packages were capable of exploding.

But three senior appeal judges ruled that both convictions should stand.

During a brief hearing yesterday judge Lord Menzies told the court: "These appeals are refused."

The plot centred on four suspicious packages discovered in spring 2011. A device sent to Lennon at Celtic's training ground in Lennoxtown, East Dunbartonshire, was intercepted at a sorting office on March 26 that year when a postman spotted a nail protruding from it.

Two days later a package delivered to Ms Godman's office in Bridge of Weir, Renfrewshire, caused the evacuation of the building.

Another package sent to republican organisation Cairde Na hEireann (Friends of Ireland) in Glasgow's Gallowgate was later found to contain potentially explosive peroxide.

The final package, found in a postbox at Montgomerie Terrace in Kilwinning, was addressed to the late Mr McBride.