convicted? which trial was this, I don't recall this particular arrest.
Pakistani immigrant guilty in Herald Square subway bomb plot
NEW YORK (AP) -- A Pakistani immigrant was convicted on Wednesday on charges he plotted to blow up one of Manhattan's busiest subway stations in retaliation for the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
A federal jury in Brooklyn deliberated two days before finding Shahawar Matin Siraj guilty of conspiracy and other charges. He faces up to life in prison.
The defense had sought to portray Siraj, 23, as an impressionable simpleton who was lured into a phony plot by a paid informant eager to earn his keep. Prosecutors disputed that claim, arguing that even if it wasn't the defendant's idea to bomb a subway station, no law-abiding citizen would have gone along with it.
U.S. Attorney Todd Harrison suggested to jurors that "normal people" like them would have responded, "Excuse me, are you crazy? Thanks, but no thanks."
Siraj and another man suspected in the plot, James Elshafay, were arrested on the eve of the 2004 Republican National Convention carrying crude diagrams of their target - the subway station in Herald Square, a dense shopping district that includes Macy's flagship department store. Elshafay immediately agreed to cooperate with the government.
Authorities said Siraj had no affiliation with known terrorist organizations. Instead, he caught the attention of the informant, Osama Eldawoody, and an undercover police officer with his anti-American rants at an Islamic bookstore where he worked.
Eldawoody, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Egypt, and the Bangladesh-born undercover officer - who both testified for the government - had been assigned by the New York Police Department to identify and monitor Islamic extremists in the city's Muslim neighborhoods following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The undercover, who testified using an alias, described being plucked straight out of the police academy in 2003 and given orders to become a "walking camera" among Muslims. He recalled a conversation on the second anniversary of the 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center in which Siraj "complimented" Osama bin Laden.
"He said he was a talented brother and a great planner and that he hoped bin Laden planned something big for America," the officer said.
Has been in the news. His defense was that the government used an undercover agent to entrap him. He would never of came up with the plan to blow up subway stations by himself.
Really! This is bizarre.
He was part of a plot to bomb a subway station at the time of the Republican convention. A Moslem immigrant who volunteered to go undercover for the NYPD after 9/11 turned him in and testified against him. Another conspirator copped a plea.
Also testifying in this trial was a NYPD patrolman, born in Bangladesh, who was recruited out of the police academy for undercover work. He testified, basically, that although he didn't know about the plot he was aware of this defendant as a loudmouth who made threats against the U.S. on a regular basis. This squelched the defense of entrapment.
Of course you don't remember....the MSM has been too busy trying to convict President Bush of lying, starting the war for oil...any excuse they could find.
But, do they tell this story....maybe on the 34th page of Section B.