Bassist Sentenced in Qaeda Case

A jazz musician who pledged to teach martial arts to Al Qaeda members was sentenced to 15 years in prison today by a judge who said it didn't matter that no Al Qaeda members were actually involved in the case.

A 44-year-old martial arts expert, Tarik Shah, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska after he pleaded guilty in the spring, admitting that he conspired to provide material support to Al Qaeda.

Shah was the third of four defendants to be sentenced for his role in a conspiracy to aid terrorist groups abroad.

Shah's lawyers said he should get leniency because the plot originated when a government informant enlisted him to help Al Qaeda, taking him away from an otherwise law-abiding life.

But the judge rejected those arguments, noting that she had heard Shah on tapes enthusiastically embrace a chance to teach martial arts to Al Qaeda operatives.

She also rejected a request that his sentence be less than 15 years because he had been housed in solitary confinement for more than two years since his arrest.

Judge Preska said the conditions of confinement were not unreasonable considering that he had boasted in tape-recorded conversations prior to his arrest that he knew how to fashion prayer beads into a strangulation tool.

Before he was sentenced, Shah, who plays bass, asked the judge for mercy.

"I guarantee you will never see me again, judge, unless it's on the television playing (music) with someone," he said.

Tapes played at the trial of a co-defendant, Rafiq Abdus Sabir, showed that Shah met with an undercover FBI agent he thought was an Al Qaeda recruiter in May 2005.

During the meeting, he pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda and agreed to provide martial arts expertise to Al Qaeda fighters, according to the tape.

Prosecutors also said Shah met multiple times from 2003 through May 2005 with a confidential source and an FBI undercover agent, expressing the desire to help Al Qaeda by recruiting others.

Sabir, of Boca Raton, Fla., is scheduled to be sentenced next week. He was convicted in May of providing material support to terrorists by agreeing to treat injured Al Qaeda fighters so they could return to Iraq to fight Americans.

Previously in the case, a Brooklyn bookstore owner who pleaded guilty to money laundering and lying to federal agents was sentenced to 13 years in prison, and a Washington, D.C., cab driver who pleaded guilty to conspiring to help a terrorist organization was sentenced to 15 years.