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NEW YORK — A man was sentenced to five years in prison on Friday for conspiring to blow up a busy Manhattan subway station. James Elshafay, had pleaded guilty and testified against the mastermind of the plot, Shahawar Matin Siraj, at a trial last year in federal court in Brooklyn. Elshafay, the son of an Egyptian father and Irish mother, testified that after meeting Siraj at an Islamic bookstore, they hatched an initial scheme — later abandoned — to blow up the four bridges connecting Staten Island to Brooklyn and New Jersey. He also told jurors at Siraj's trial that...

MADRID, Spain (AP) - 0302DV-Grand-Central A sketch of New York's Grand Central Terminal was found a year ago in the home of a suspect in the Madrid train bombings, Spanish and U.S. officials said Wednesday. The sketch and data were on a computer disk seized about two weeks after the March 11 train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people last year, the newspaper El Mundo said. In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the FBI had informed the Police Department about the existence of the data on the computer and the city responded by tightening security at transit centers....

FINALLY, some good may come from the Valerie Plame kerfuffle - if Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has the stones to do what's right. A grave crime was exposed Dec. 16 when New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau published a story revealing President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to listen in on conversations between al-Qaeda suspects abroad and people in the United States without first obtaining a warrant. "We're seeing clearly now that [President] Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator," wrote Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. But the scandal was not the program Mr....

Two men seen taking pictures of the George Washington Bridge from an inflatable raft in the Hudson River yesterday afternoon were taken into custody by the police when they came ashore. The police said last night that no arrests had been made, but Sgt. Brian Mullen of the 34th Precinct said that charges against the men, who were not identified, were pending. One possible charge was unauthorized use of the raft in the wrong place, he said.

A man described as a high-ranking operative of the Palestinian militant group Hamas was arrested last week as he videotaped the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Virginia, and he then was held as a material witness in an unrelated case, authorities said. Ismael Selim Elbarasse of Annandale, Virginia, long suspected by authorities of having financial ties to the Palestinian extremist group, was taken into custody Friday, the U.S. attorney's office in Maryland said Monday. He was held as a material witness in a Chicago terrorism case. Elbarasse made an initial appearance in Baltimore's federal courthouse Monday before U.S. District Magistrate...

Virginia man charged in alleged plot to assassinate Bush By MATTHEW BARAKAT Associated Press Writer ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- A former high school valedictorian in Virginia was charged Tuesday with conspiring to assassinate President Bush and conspiracy to support the al-Qaida terrorist network. Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 23, a U.S. citizen, made an initial appearance Tuesday in U.S. District Court. He claimed that he was tortured while detained in Saudi Arabia since June of 2003 and offered through his lawyer to show the judge his scars. The indictment said that in 2002 and 2003 Abu Ali and an unidentified coconspirator...

Cheerleaders for TerrorismBy Erick StakelbeckFrontPageMagazine.com | June 17, 2003 Two groups whom Islamic terrorists can count on for sympathy and support are radical lawyers and their counterparts in American law schools. Lynne Stewart is a hero of the National Lawyers Guild and a sought-after campus lecturer. While out on bail under indictment for colluding with a terrorist leader, she has been a sought-after speaker for law school audiences who relish her attacks on Attorney General John Ashcroft as a modern-day fascist and on her country for its imperialist and racist policies. Stewart made national headlines in April 2002 when she...

<p>The American Muslim leader charged with smuggling $340,000 out of Libya was suspected of funneling cash from Osama bin Laden to blind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman in the failed 1993 attempt to blow up New York City landmarks, The Post has learned.</p>

<p>May 26, 2003 -- Federal agents have nabbed an Ohio truck driver after unmasking him as an al Qaeda operative in plots to collapse a suspension bridge and blow up an airliner in the United States, according to a new report.</p>