NEW YORK - A Bosnian-born US citizen was sentenced to life in prison on Friday for his role in planning a suicide bomb attack on New York City subways in 2009 at the behest of senior al-Qaida operatives.
Adis Medunjanin, 28, was convicted in May by a federal jury in Brooklyn on nine counts including conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism and providing material support to al Qaeda.
Prosecutors had urged US District Judge John Gleeson to give Medunjanin the maximum penalty of life in prison, saying in a pre-sentencing court filing that he "committed a host of heinous crimes aimed at killing and maiming his fellow American citizens in order to alter and take revenge for American foreign policy."
Medunjanin's accused co-conspirator Najibullah Zazi was arrested in September 2009, just days before Medunjanin and a third member of the plot, Zarein Ahmedzay, planned to carry out what US Attorney General Eric Holder called "one of the most serious terrorist threats" to the United States since the September 11 attacks.