Man Gets 30 Years in NYC Subway Bomb Plot

They caught this creep in MY hometown. I don't usually like jury duty, but I would have been happy to be on this one.

January 9, 2007

Man Gets 30 Years in Subway Bomb Plot

By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

A federal judge sentenced a 24-year-old Pakistani immigrant yesterday to 30 years in prison for plotting to bomb the Herald Square subway station in 2004, moments after the defendant apologized to the judge and prosecutors but blamed a police informer for his fate.

The immigrant, Shahawar Matin Siraj, who has been held without bail since he and another man were arrested on Aug. 27, 2004, three days before the Republican National Convention, stood with his shoulders slumped as the judge, Nina Gershon of United States District Court in Brooklyn, meted out his sentence.

Dressed in a blue short-sleeved prison smock with a white long-underwear shirt beneath it, Mr. Siraj offered a brief, disjointed apology before the judge pronounced sentence. He paused briefly to take two long sips of water when his voice began to break.

He cited statements he had made about his plan to blow up the subway and his anger at America, statements that were secretly recorded by a Police Department informer who defense lawyers argued lured him into the plot. The tapes were played at the trial.

“Your honor I want to apologize about whatever I said in the tapes — I wish I could take those words back but it already happened, I already said those things,” he said. “I’m taking responsibility for 34th Street, but I was manipulated by this person.”

But the jury in the case, which deliberated 10 hours over two days, rejected his entrapment defense. It had centered on the paid informer, who defense lawyers said had stoked Mr. Siraj’s rage with images of Muslims abused at the hands of Americans, including photographs of soldiers abusing inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Mr. Siraj was convicted on May 24 on four counts of conspiracy, including the most serious, plotting to bomb a public transportation system.

Judge Gershon, when she handed down the sentence, noted that while some of the recordings captured Mr. Siraj saying the attack should occur at the time the station was the least busy, it would nonetheless have been deadly and devastating.

“The crimes committed here were extremely serious,” she said. “They had the potential, if not thwarted, to wreak havoc with the New York City transportation system, indeed, the tristate-area transportation system.”

She added that such an attack would have meant enormous economic losses, disruption and loss of life.

The men never obtained explosives, there was no timetable for an attack, and the men were not linked to any known terrorist group.

Indeed, the informer, Osama Eldawoody, 50, told Mr. Siraj and the other man who was arrested, James Elshafay, that he worked for a fictitious group called the Brotherhood and said he would be able to provide the explosives for the plot. Mr. Elshafay began cooperating with prosecutors shortly after his arrest and also testified against Mr. Siraj.

Under federal sentencing guidelines, Mr. Siraj, who came to the United States from Pakistan with his parents in 1999, faced 30 years to life in prison. He had turned down a plea deal offered by prosecutors under which he would have been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The hours of tapes played at trial revealed an angry man who raged against America, praised Osama bin Laden and predicted additional terror attacks in the United States, all while discussing his bomb plot.

Yesterday, the courtroom was crowded, largely with news reporters and law enforcement officials. Mr. Siraj’s parents, appearing stunned when the sentence was dispensed, were also in the courtroom, and his uncle sat in the last row. His mother, Shahina Parveen, dressed in a patterned light blue tunic and pants, and a white head scarf, clutched a string of pale green prayer beads that she had carried during the trial.

After the proceeding, she began to cry as she sat on a bench outside the courtroom and talked to one of her son’s lawyers, Khurrum B. Wahid, slipping a tissue behind her glasses. Later, she spoke briefly to reporters, maintaining her son’s innocence and saying he would appeal.

“The N.Y.P.D., through a paid informant, tricked my son and got him stuck in this,” Ms. Parveen said, as Mr. Wahid translated from the Urdu. “He didn’t do anything. I didn’t get any justice. It was not a fair sentence.”

But the Police Department, which investigated the case, the first in which a terrorism inquiry by its Intelligence Division led to a prosecution in federal court, hailed the sentence, calling it “a milestone in the safeguarding of New York City.”

“It says that those who conspire against New York will pay a severe price,” Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said in a statement, praising the Intelligence Division, saying it “uncovered a murderous plot in its infancy and stopped it before lives were lost.”

After the sentencing, Mr. Siraj’s lead lawyer, Martin J. Stolar, called the prison term “outrageous.”

“The New York City Police Department was able to create a crime in order to solve it, and claim a victory in the war on terror, and that’s what he was sentenced as, rather than a dimwit who was manipulated” by an informer, he said.

But the prosecutors in the case, Todd Harrison and Marshall L. Miller, argued that Mr. Siraj was in control.

“He knew exactly what was going on and was the initiator of all the steps,” Mr. Harrison said. He added that Mr. Siraj had come up with the plan, conducted surveillance of the station on his own and directed how the bombers should dress, where the bomb should be placed and what their escape route should be.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/nyregion/09plot.html

Below: The guilty party, Shahawar Matin Siraj

soooo.....basically what he is in prison for is talking about bombing a place......no freedom of speech whatsoever is left in this once free country.
basically what this is showing is that words are no different than the actions themselves

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MastaChronic

soooo.....basically what he is in prison for is talking about bombing a place......no freedom of speech whatsoever is left in this once free country.
basically what this is showing is that words are no different than the actions themselves

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Then I guess that you think they should have left him alone so he could bomb 34th street?

He admitted in court that he was going to do it. Plotting a massive crime like that is not a minor offense - neither here, nor anywhere else in the country or the world.

If somebody threatens to do something, believe it.

what im saying is, if things continue the way they have been then we wont just have regular crime, we will have thought crime as well, and it will be punished the same as if they actually did commit the act.