By IANS
New York : An Al Qaeda member, who was trained in Pakistan by the 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, also known as KSM, has been sentenced to life imprisonment by a US federal court.
Mohammed Mansour Jabarah alias Abu Hafs al Kuwaiti was sentenced last week in Manhattan federal court for conspiring to kill Americans by bombing US embassies in Singapore and the Philippines, a release by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said.
A Canadian citizen of Iraqi origin, Jabarah, 26, was trained in Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in 2000-01, where he also spent time with the Taliban forces.
Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden sent him to Pakistan in 2001. In Karachi, he took training from senior Al Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has admitted to being the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. KSM is now in the US custody.
While in Pakistan, Jabarah also took direction from Riduan Isomuddin (popularly known as Hambali), leader of a Southeast Asian terrorist group.
According to the documents filed in the case and the guilty plea, KSM sent Jabarah to Malaysia to work with Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) in their operation against the US and Israeli embassies in the Philippines.
Subsequently, he performed operational surveillance of the US embassies in Manila and Singapore.
In December 2001, after the terrorist plot was exposed in Singapore, Jabarah fled and landed in Oman. There he was told to establish a safe house for Al Qaeda members fleeing from Afghanistan en route to Yemen.
In February 2002, he was arrested in Oman and deported to Canada.
In May that year, he “voluntarily” came to the US following his agreement to cooperate with the FBI. Later that year, the FBI discovered that he secretly disavowed his commitment to cooperate and was, instead, planning to attack the federal officials. Then he was transferred to the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
The felony charges to which Jabarah has pleaded guilty include conspiracy to kill US nationals, conspiracy to kill US officers and employees engaged in their official duties, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction against US nationals and conspiracy to destroy US property by means of fire or explosives.
“Jabarah was a deadly serious terrorist. He swore allegiance to bin Laden and lived with KSM, took orders from Hambali and planned to kill Americans in Manila and Singapore,” said Mark J. Mershon, assistant director-in-charge of FBI’s New York office.
“Fortunately he did not succeed with his plans, the consequences of which would have been devastating,” Mershon was quoted as saying in the FBI release.