NEW YORK – An al-Qaeda member who secretly pleaded guilty more than five years ago to planning bomb attacks on American embassies will emerge from the shadows Friday to receive a lengthy prison sentence.
Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, 26, will face a likely sentence of life in prison for a brief career in terror that included training with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and unsuccessfully plotting to bomb embassies in the Philippines and Singapore, prosecutors said in court papers.
The Canadian citizen’s appearance in a Manhattan courtroom will be his first time in public since his detention in 2002, and Thursday marked the first time the court system made public any details of his case, which has been under seal since his arrest.
Prosecutors said there was a good reason for the secrecy.
Jabarah initially worked as a government informant after he was brought to the US from Canada in 2002 after his capture in Jordan. He pleaded guilty to the terror charges that summer in a secret proceeding without mounting a defense and briefly lived in an FBI-arranged housing facility rather than a prison while he worked as a collaborator.
“Jabarah was extensively debriefed by the FBI and prosecutors and provided a considerable amount of valuable intelligence,” prosecutors said in court papers.
That changed, authorities said, when agents searched his quarters and found weapons, bomb-making instructions and materials suggesting he intended to murder some of the agents with whom he was dealing.
He was transferred to a federal detention center in Manhattan and spent the next four years isolated in a cell where he was under video surveillance 24 hours a day. He was moved to a different prison in 2006. Talks to renew his cooperation broke down.
Attempts to e-mail and phone the lawyer who court records said was present for Jabarah’s guilty plea in 2002 were not immediately successful Thursday. It was unclear who is representing him now.
In court papers, prosecutors said Jabarah is of Iraqi descent and lived in Kuwait until age 12, when his family moved to Canada.
He traveled to Afghanistan after graduating high school, and in 2001 he attended al-Qaeda training camps, where he met with Bin Laden and other top terrorist figures.
Jabarah then became a major coordinator of a plot to bomb embassies in Manila and Singapore, according to the criminal information to which he pleaded guilty in 2002.
He had visited both cities and received $50,000 to carry out the attacks before the arrest of several co-conspirators foiled the plot in December 2001.
Jabarah was arrested after fleeing to Oman, Jordan, and was deported to Canada, where he was interrogated before agreeing to plead guilty in the US and provide information about other terrorists.
Prosecutors in New York said Jabarah had been living at an undisclosed location for several months when his attitude abruptly changed following the death of a childhood friend who had attacked US Marines posted in Kuwait.
Agents found a newspaper article about the armed attackers in Jabarah’s quarters, with a handwritten note at the top: “By Allah I will avenge your death.” – AP