Imam dodges jail time in NYC subway-plot case but is ordered to leave US within 90 days

Imam dodges jail time in NYC subway-plot case

NEW YORK — An Afghanistan-born imam linked to the suspects in an aborted suicide bomb plot against New York City subway stations dodged jail time at his sentencing Thursday but was ordered to leave the country within 90 days.

Ahmad Afzali pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in a deal sparing him up to six months in prison.

“I take full responsibility for my actions,” the 38-year-old Afzali said in a tearful statement in Brooklyn federal court.

“It was never my intention to help those idiots for what they did in the name of Islam,” he said, referring to the terrorist suspects.

Afzali was sentenced to time served, four days from Sept. 20 to Sept. 24. He will be monitored electronically until he leaves the country.

He also apologized to the Muslim community, his family and the United States. He said he doesn’t expect to return to Afghanistan but does not know which country he will go to. “I’m going to start shopping around,” he said.

He was arrested in September as federal authorities scrambled to thwart a plot by Najibullah Zazi, a Colorado airport van driver who is the case’s principal suspect. Afzali has said that he had wanted to help authorities, but lied under grilling by the FBI about his phone conversations with Zazi.

After returning to the United States, the plotters hoped to detonate bombs on trains at two of the city’s biggest subway stations: Times Square and Grand Central Terminal, according to two officials. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of the investigation.

Zazi admitted that he tested bomb-making materials in a Denver suburb before traveling by car to New York intending to attack the subway system to avenge U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan.

Two other men suspected of direct roles in the plot, Adis Medunjanin and Zarein Ahmedzay, have pleaded not guilty to charges they sought to join Zazi in what prosecutors described as “three coordinated suicide bombing attacks” on Manhattan subway lines. The alleged attacks were timed for days after the eighth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorism.

Prosecutors say the attacks were modeled after the July 2005 bombings on the London transit system. Four suicide bombers killed 52 people and themselves in an attack on three subway trains and a bus in London.

The alleged New York plot was disrupted in early September when police stopped Zazi’s car as it entered New York.

Another suspect was recently arrested in Pakistan, law enforcement officials said Monday.

Associated Press writers Devlin Barrett in Washington and Tom Hays in New York contributed to this report.