A Pakistani immigrant was convicted yesterday of plotting to wreak havoc in the heart of the city by blowing up the Herald Square subway station. After a four-week trial, a Brooklyn federal jury needed just 10 hours to find Shahawar Matin Siraj guilty of conspiring to place an explosive device inside a garbage can or under a bench.
The Islamic-bookstore employee - whose lawyers presented a defense that he was merely a dimwitted dupe - sat emotionless until the jury forewoman read out read out the panel's verdict on the four-count indictment.
"Guilty, your honor," the juror told Judge Nina Gershon, prompting Siraj, 23, to let out a brief sigh, close his eyes and slightly drop his head into chest.
Siraj was busted Aug. 27, 2004, just days before the Republican National Convention was set to kick off.
The goal of the blast - as he stated on numerous video and audio recordings that the NYPD secretly captured - would have been to cause economic harm, not carnage and death.
His sinister scheme was unraveled by a wired-up paid NYPD informant, Osama El Dawoody, who Siraj thought was part of an Islamic brotherhood ready, willing and able to pull off a terrorist strike.
Both Siraj and his co-conspirator James Elshafay - a diagnosed schizophrenic who pleaded guilty shortly after their arrest and testified against Siraj - were caught discussing nitty-gritty details of their plan, including targets, how big the bomb should be, how to get nuclear materials and different disguises to use when they planted the bomb.
"The verdict is an important milestone in safeguarding New York against plotters, whether homegrown or foreign," Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
But Siraj's lawyer, Martin Stolar, insisted his client was entrapped, saying, "This was a manufactured crime.
"This is not somebody who is a terrorist."
Siraj faces life in prison when he is sentenced on Oct. 5, but both Stolar and prosecutors believe he will receive a much lighter prison-stint.