Vietnamese-born Al-Qaeda recruit sentenced to 40 years in US

[link to www.breitbart.com]


A US judge sentenced a Vietnamese-born graphic designer who plotted to carry out a suicide attack at London’s Heathrow airport after training with Al-Qaeda in Yemen to 40 years in prison on Friday.

Minh Pham, 33, broke down in tears after expressing regret in a New York courtroom and recognizing the severity of his punishment in America five months after pleading guilty to terrorism charges.

A Muslim convert who left Vietnam as a baby and spent most of his life in Britain, Pham travelled to Yemen in December 2010 to receive military training from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a group that has claimed repeated attacks on the West.

He returned to Britain–where he had left behind his 8-months-pregnant wife–in July 2011 after offering to carry out a suicide attack and being instructed to bomb civilians arriving at London’s busiest airport from Israel or America, the court heard.

“I made a very serious mistake,” Pham told Judge Alison Nathan before choking up at the prospect of spending decades in a maximum-security American jail separated from his family.

Dressed in navy prison scrubs, an orange T-shirt and orange canvas shoes, he denied that he had ever intended to hurt anyone, saying he had promised to carry out the attack only to get home.