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Convicted Subway Terror Plotter Gets 5 Years

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Mar 2, 2007 1:03 pm US/Eastern

Convicted Subway Terror Plotter Gets 5 Years

NEW YORK (CBS/AP) ―

Click to enlarge 1 of 1: Shahawar Matin Siraj was convicted on conspiracy charges.
AP

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A man was sentenced to five years in prison on Friday for conspiring to blow up a busy Manhattan subway station.

The defendant, James Elshafay, had pleaded guilty and testified against the mastermind of the plot, Shahawar Matin Siraj, last year at a trial in federal court in Brooklyn.

Siraj and Elshafay were caught with crude diagrams of the Herald Square subway station on Aug. 27, 2004, the eve of the Republican National Convention. Prosecutors said the men wanted to avenge the abuses of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.

At the time of the arrests, authorities said that the men never obtained explosives and had not been linked to known terrorist groups.

Elshafay, the son of an Egyptian father and an Irish mother, told jurors at Siraj's trial that he was taking medication for depression and schizophrenia. He 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.

When asked about Siraj's reaction to the conversation about the bridges, Elshafay said, "He smiled."

Siraj was sentenced last year to 30 years in prison.

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