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| Wrist slap for Zazi's 'tip' imam | |
| 2010-04-16 | |
| The Queens imam who lied to the FBI about tipping off subway suicide-bomb plotters was given a wrist slap yesterday by a Brooklyn federal judge who sentenced him to the four days he's already served in jail. Ahmad Wais Afzali, 38, had been facing six months in the clink after pleading guilty to lying to authorities about telling convicted suicide subway bomb plotter Najibullah Zazi that federal agents were following him. But despite his break, he will have to leave the country in 90 days or be deported to his native Afghanistan under the plea agreement.
Afzali, who worked as an informant for the NYPD, told Zazi that his phones were tapped, but warned him not to get involved in "nonsense" in Iraq and Afghanistan. The al Qaeda-trained bomb plotter aborted his plan, threw away his bomb material and fled the city after Afzali spilled the news that the law was onto him. "I take full responsibility for my actions," he told the judge yesterday. "Honest to God, it was never my intention to help those idiots for what they do in the name of Islam. I apologize . . . I am pleading for mercy. I am not a bad man. The spiritual and psychological burden is far greater than any sentence you can impose." | |
| Posted by:tipper |