Security Tight for Bomb Plot Sentencing
Security at New York’s federal courthouse was at its tightest Tuesday in preparation for the sentencing of a militant Muslim cleric and his followers convicted in a bombing plot.
The sentencing of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and nine others is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. EST today and is expected to continue into the evening, with each defendant being allowed to speak.
Abdel-Rahman, 57, who will be sentenced last, faces up to life in prison. The blind cleric had been charged with being the group’s spiritual leader and approving and encouraging acts of violence to punish the United States for its support of Israel.
Prosecutors said their conspiracy included the planned bombings of the United Nations building and the bridges and tunnels leading into New York, along with assassination plots.
The 10 were convicted after the second trial related to the February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, which killed six people and injured more than 1,000. The defendants in this case were not accused of being co-conspirators with four men convicted in 1994 of carrying out the bombing.
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