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.
any NYC jury, is not going to mess around with these trials.
they should have tried Moussaoui in NYC - even though its a more liberal place then Virgina, he would have gotten a death sentence here.
"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."
This is smart police strategy. We need some more peeps in the mosques, however.
The third world is entirely made up of 'impressionable simpletons': Impressionable, highly superstitious, arrested capability for reason, harboring low self-esteem, swelling with thick-headed pride over nothing to be particularly proud about, quick to join seething throngs in mob action, prone to emotional outbursts. Precisely the sort of easily-led fool that Jihad wants for a soldier.
This is a defense?