By Nick Carey
CHICAGO Thu Jan 17, 2013 4:59pm EST
CHICAGO (Reuters) - A federal court sentenced a Pakistani-born Chicago businessman with Thursday to 14 years with penitentiary with regard to giving support that will a great Islamic militant number held accountable for the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Tahawwur Rana, 52, a ex - Pakistani Army health practitioner using Canadian citizenship, acquired been identified responsible throughout June 2011 of conspiring for you to infiltration a Danish newspaper, some sort of plot hatched by way of the actual militant group that was never carried out.
Judge Harry Leinenweber said he / she received quite a few letters from family members, good friends and the like testifying that will Rana has been an "intelligent dude willing to offer assistance inside a great distance to many, quite a few people."
"What will be puzzling. is usually how this kind of person could easily get drew into a dastardly plot," Leinenweber stated for the sentencing hearing.
Rana have recently been located disloyal with providing assistance in order to your militant collection Lashkar-e-Taiba, blamed with regard to orchestrating 2008 attacks within Mumbai in which harmed 166 people. He was not found to get complicit while in the attacks.
In this trial, your crucial witness - Rana's childhood friend, David Headley - implicated Pakistan's data agency, ISI, while in the Mumbai attack.
Headley pleaded guilty in order to scouting spots intended for the particular Mumbai attackers directed simply by Lashkar-e-Taiba, which the U.S. State Department has designated a new terrorist organization. Headley, an American having a Pakistani father, is because often be sentenced upon January 24.
The plot to help episode your Danish magazine Jyllands-Posten was suitable when retaliation to the paper's verdict with june 2006 to be able to submit twelve month period cartoons by means of numerous artists, many of which depict the Prophet Mohammad. The conspirators talked about beheading staff of the paper.
Prosecutor Daniel Collins argued in the sentencing hearing than a unpleasant sentence was important a result of violent mother nature associated with the piece knowning that Rana appeared to be responsive to exactly what Lashkar represented.
"He believed that they had continue with his or her hands and wrists and yes it don't present him temporary halt for a time and he aided them," Collins said.
Rana's legal practitioner argued how the businessman had encountered your coronary heart assault in prison as well as what food was in usually very poor health, incorporating this he or she appeared to be unlikely in order to represent a threat to society.
"He is a good gentleman along with got sucked into something," Patrick Blegen claimed around court. "But there's no danger this he'll practice it again, None."
Rana, which suffered a greatest word associated with 30 years throughout prison, sitting quietly over the hearing and rejected for you to handle the actual judge just before sentencing. Rana's safety company prefer to appeal his conviction plus explained they would discuss whether for you to charm that sentence.
(Reporting By Nick Carey ; Editing simply by Cynthia Johnston and also Andrew Hay)
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