London – An al-Qaeda operative was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday for plotting to bomb the New York Stock Exchange and other U.S. financial targets and blow up landmark London hotels and train stations with limousines packed with gas tanks, napalm and nails.
The plans were designed to cause maximum carnage, the judge told Dhiren Barot, who stared blankly ahead as he learned he would not be eligible for parole for at least 40 years – one of the harshest sentences ever meted out in a British court.
Barot, a 34-year-old British convert to Islam who pleaded guilty last month to conspiring to commit mass murder, remains wanted by the United States and Yemen on separate terror-related charges.
Under British law, he could be temporarily transferred to the United States to stand trial.
Investigators said Barot traveled the world to gain terrorist training, meeting terror leaders including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
Born in India and raised in London, Barot began plotting in 2000 to attack a host of financial industry targets in the United States.
Investigators said he shelved the plan after the 9/11 attacks, focusing his efforts on ways to detonate limousines loaded with gas, napalm and nails.
His targets included landmark London hotels such as The Ritz and The Savoy, and railway stations such as London’s Waterloo, Paddington and King’s Cross, prosecutor Edmund Lawson said at the two-day sentencing hearing.
Prosecutors said they had no firm timeframe for the attacks.
