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NEW YORK — A man was sentenced to five years in prison on Friday for conspiring to blow up a busy Manhattan subway station. James Elshafay, had pleaded guilty and testified against the mastermind of the plot, Shahawar Matin Siraj, at a trial last year in federal court in Brooklyn. Elshafay, the son of an Egyptian father and Irish mother, 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. He also told jurors at Siraj's trial that...

U.S.-Based Plotters On January 8, 2007, Shahawar Matin Siraj, a Queens, New York resident, received a thirty-year jail term after being convicted of conspiring to plant explosive devices at a New York City subway station. On March 2, 2007, James Elshafay, a Staten Island, New York resident, received a five-year prison sentence for his involvement in the plot; he had pled guilty in October 2004. The Target: The Herald Square Subway Station Siraj and Elshafay planned to target Manhattan’s Herald Square (34th Street) subway station, which United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Roslynn R. Mauskopf labeled...

Pakistani convicted for plot to bomb New York subway05-25-2006, 00h32 NEW YORK (AFP) In this courtroom illustration, James Elshafay (C) and Shahawar Matin Siraj (R) appear August 2004 in Federal District Court in New York, before Magistrate Kiyo Matsumoto (R rear) during an arraignment on charges related to an alleged plot to bomb a New York City subway station. Standing at left are Assistant US attorneys John Nathanson (L) and Kelly Currie (2nd L). (AFP/Getty Images/File) A Pakistani man was convicted of planning to blow up a New York subway station ahead of the Republican National Convention held before the...

A federal judge slapped a would-be terrorist, who plotted to blow up the Herald Square subway station, with 30 years behind bars yesterday - heeding calls from prosecutors who said the young radical was "perfectly willing to have people die." Shahawar Matin Siraj, 24, was convicted in May of conspiring to place an explosive device inside a garbage can or under a bench in the crowded West 34th Street subway station, which sits just beneath Macy's flagship department store. He wanted to bomb the station in retaliation for war abuses against Iraqis. "The defendant's role was central . . ....

Recent reports outlining what Time magazine has called the "untold story" of a cancelled al Qaeda plot against the New York subway system have excited considerable media hype and public consternation. The account is part of Ron Suskind's new book, The One Percent Doctrine, that was excerpted in the June 26 edition of Time. According to Suskind, al Qaeda developed a "revolutionary new WMD device" that would generate cyanide gas, and these weapons -- which he refers to as "mubtakkar" devices -- were to have been planted on subways by operatives who were in place and preparing to act in...

NEW YORK — Two men were arrested Friday night, a little more than two days before the start of the Republican National Convention, accused of conspiring to bomb a subway station and other high-profile targets here. New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, announcing the arrests at a press conference yesterday, said that the suspects — one a Pakistani national, the other a U.S. citizen — had been under surveillance for a year. The two men, identified as Shahawar Matin Siraj, 21, a Pakistani who lives in Queens, and James El Shafay, 19, a U.S. citizen living on Staten Island, were...

Former CAIR Member PleadsGuilty to Terrorism Charges By Andrew L. Jaffee, January 19, 2004 Home   Search   Forum   Terms The Council on American Islamic Relations' (CAIR) ties to terrorism just keep getting more and more obvious. We're not talking accusations and indictments anymore. Now a former CAIR member has pled guilty to terrorism charges. According to FOXNews.com last Friday, CAIR's former Communications Specialist and Civil Rights Coordinator, Randall Todd "Ismail" Royer, pled guilty to involvement with the Kashmiri terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, ties to Afghanistan's Taliban, connections to Chechnya's terrorists, and last but not least, involvement with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. Specific indictments...