Militant Cleric Given Life Prison Term For Terror Plot

Professing their innocence, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine followers were handed long prison sentences Wednesday for plotting to blow up the United Nations, FBI offices, highway tunnels and other New York area landmarks in a single day of terror.

Abdel-Rahman, a militant Muslim cleric and the spiritual leader of the conspiracy, delivered a long impassioned speech in Arabic before he was sentenced to a mandatory term of life without parole.

“This case is nothing but an extension of the American war against Islam,” he told U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey through an interpreter.

Then Mukasey had his turn, saying that if the sheik’s conspiracy hadn’t been stopped, it “would have resulted in the murder of hundreds, if not thousands, of people and brought about devastation on a scale that beggars the imagination, certainly on a scale unknown in this country since the Civil War.”

Of the cleric’s followers, the judge came down hardest on El Sayyid Nosair, sentencing him to life in prison for his role in the bomb plot and for killing militant anti-Arab Rabbi Meir Kahane in a New York hotel in 1990.

Nosair’s cousin Ibrahim A. El-Gabrowny, 45, received 57 years for the conspiracy and other charges, including possession of bogus passports and visas intended to get Nosair out of the country following a jailbreak.

Seven other defendants received prison terms of 25 to 35 years for planning what prosecutors called a “war of urban terrorism” aimed at altering U.S. policy in the Middle East.

The sentencing came nearly two years after the convictions of four men in the World Trade Center bombing, which killed six people and injured more than 1,000. The conspirators in the terror plot were not directly charged in that bombing but were accused of being part of the organization that carried it out.

The men planned to bomb the United Nations, FBI headquarters in Manhattan, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels and the George Washington Bridge.

The defendants were convicted Oct. 1 of seditious conspiracy and other charges. AbdelRahman, 57, also was convicted of plotting to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, which carries a mandatory life term.

The sheik criticized the United States for backing the Mubarak government, which he accused of “spreading corruption, homosexuality, AIDS and encouraging birth control.”