New York subway bomb plotter jailed for 30 years

A Pakistani immigrant to the United States was sentenced to 30 years in prison today for hatching an unsuccessful plot to blow up a busy Manhattan subway station as revenge for wartime abuses of Iraqis.

Shahawar Matin Siraj, 24, was arrested on August 27, 2004, on the eve of the Republican National Convention.

Although there was no proof he ever obtained explosives or was linked to any terror organisations, prosecutors in the New York court said his intentions were ominous: he wanted to blow up the Herald Square subway station, a bustling transport hub.

Defence lawyers had sought to convince US District Judge Nina Gershon that Siraj’s sentence should not exceed 10 years, arguing in court papers that their client was “not a dangerous psychopath but more of a confused and misguided youngster”.

Prosecutors countered that the defendant deserved at least 30 years behind bars as the driving force behind a “workable terrorist plot”.

Siraj was convicted of conspiracy last year, based partly on the evidence of a police informant, Osama Eldawoody, who was recruited to monitor Muslims at mosques and elsewhere following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.

Inside an Islamic bookstore near a Brooklyn mosque, Eldawoody wore a wire and chatted up Siraj, an employee who lived with his parents in Queens.

When the topic turned to the war in Iraq, Siraj ranted about rumours that US soldiers were sexually abusing Iraqi girls.