An al-Qaeda member who plotted a bombing in England was sentenced by a U.S. federal court on Tuesday to 40 years in prison.
Abid Naseer, 29, was arrested in 2009 in a thwarted bombing plot in Manchester, England. Though arrested in England, Naseer was extradited to the U.S., thanks to a law that allows federal prosecutors to try foreigners even when the incident in question happens overseas.
Naseer was convicted in March of aiding terrorism and conspiring with al-Qaeda. He had faced a maximum sentence of life in prison.
“I hope you remember that an American court gave you a lifesaver,” Judge Raymond J. Dearie of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, N.Y. said at the sentencing on Tuesday, the New York Times reports.
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According to the Times, Dearie said in court that he struggled to comprehend how Naseer, raised in a “loving” middle-class Pakistani family, had decided to join al-Qaeda as an adult.
“How you go from that to this, as much as I searched to try to understand, I don’t,” he said.
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