Terror operative gets 40 years in bomb plots
A 29-year-old Pakistani man, linked to a foiled 2009 bomb plot against the New York subway system and other al-Qaeda targets, was sentenced to 40 years in prison Tuesday as renewed terror threats shadowed much of the globe.
Abid Naseer, the eighth al-Qaeda operative to face federal charges with links to the New York plot, also sought to launch an attack against a shopping mall in the United Kingdom.
"This al-Qaeda plot was intended by the group's leaders and Naseer to send a message to the United States and its allies,'' Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Robert Capers said in a written statement after Naseer's sentencing hearing in federal court. "Today's sentence sends an even more powerful message in response: terrorists who target the U.S. and its allies will be held accountable for their violent crimes to the full extent of the law.''
Naseer's March conviction on charges of providing material support to al-Qaeda and conspiring to use a destructive device in connection with a crime of violence, was aided in part by documents seized in the deadly 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The case marked the first time material seized in the raid had been offered as evidence in court.
At trial, federal prosecutors asserted that Naseer had been in contact with the same al-Qaeda handler who was providing direction to Najibullah Zazi, one of the leaders of the New York subway bombing cell. Zazi, who pleaded guilty in 2010, testified against Naseer at trial earlier this year.
Federal authorities have described the attempt on the New York subway system as one of the most serious terror plots uncovered since the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
In the British shopping mall plot, prosecutors said Naseer and other associates had been sent from Pakistan to the United Kingdom in 2006 to prepare for an attack. Naseer and his accomplices entered the country on student visas and then quickly dropped out of the university where they had been enrolled.
After returning briefly to Peshawar, Pakistan in 2008, about the same time that Zazi was getting explosives and weapons training there, Naseer went back to the United Kingdom to finish planning for the shopping mall attack in Manchester.
In early April 2009, according to prosecutors, Naseer told his al-Qaeda handler that he was planning a large "wedding'' for the upcoming Easter holiday, coded language for an attack.
The terror threat is once again dominating U.S. and world events, just more than a week after Islamic State operatives launched coordinated attacks in Paris, killing at least 130 people.
And last Friday, 20 people were killed in a terror attack on a western hotel in Mali.
The attacks prompted the U.S. State Department to issue a world-wide travel warning, while local law enforcement authorities across the U.S. were urged to review their plans to guard against mass shooting attacks.
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