Lawyers Are Far Apart Over Herald Square Plotter’s Fate

A man whose terrorist plot to blow up the Herald Square subway station was foiled by aggressive policing of an Islamic bookstore will receive his sentence today.The government has asked a judge to sentence Shahawar Matin Siraj to between 30 years and life in prison. Prosecutors say a long sentence is necessary because Siraj is “likely to engage in further terrorist activity upon his release,” according to a sentencing letter from assistant U.S. attorneys Todd Harrison and Marshall Miller.In the sentencing letter, the prosecutors say Siraj once “expressed his intent to remain committed to violent jihad until achieving a martyr’s death.”An attorney for Siraj has asked the judge for a sentence of closer to five years in prison. A prison term of the length the government seeks would be “overly harsh and vindictive,” the attorney, Martin Stolar, wrote in opposing papers.The sentencing decision rests entirely with Judge Nina Gershon of U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, who presided over Siraj’s month-long trial that ended in May, with a jury returning a guilty verdict on each count. Before his arrest in 2004, Siraj, 24, worked as a cashier at the Islamic bookstore that his family owned in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Some time after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he began voicing support for Osama bin Laden and terrorist acts against America, according to the evidence.In a psychological assessment of Siraj submitted last month on behalf of the defense, he is described as “intellectually limited.”Siraj never possessed any explosives, and his bomb plot never posed any imminent danger, police have said. The trial offered a unique glimpse into the NYPD’s counter terrorism policing in the Muslim community around Bay Ridge. Siraj had independently prompted the suspicions of both an undercover police officer and a police informant.The defense argued that the police informant entrapped Siraj. In a ruling last week, Judge Gershon rejected a motion for a new trial on the entrapment defense.The informant, Osama Eldawoody, who studied nuclear engineering in Egypt, trolled mosques across the city and frequented the bookstore where Siraj worked, according to the trial testimony. After the trial, he wrote a plea to Senator Clinton requesting more money and saying he has been abandoned by the Police Department, according to the letter.A co-conspirator of Siraj, James Elshafay, a mentally disturbed Staten Island youth, testified against his former friend at the government’s request. He awaits sentencing.

Lawyers Are Far Apart Over Herald Square Plotter’s Fate

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