UK man gets 20 years for trying to set up US al-Qaeda camp
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NEW YORK - A British man being treated for schizophrenia was sentenced to 20 years in prison on US charges that he helped in a failed attempt to set up an al-Qaeda training camp in a remote part of Oregon two years before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Haroon Aswat had admitted in a guilty plea in March that he traveled to Bly, Oregon, in 1999 at the direction of Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, a double-amputee and radical cleric based in London.
The Sheffield, England-born Aswat also admitted that his job was to help train recruits who wanted to fight jihad. But his lawyers argued Friday that he deserved a lesser term because he was a minor player in the plot who became a personal assistant to Mustafa, but never adopted his views.
Over time and through treatment for his mental illness, he told the judge, "I have chosen peace over violence. ... I hope to lead a peaceful, crime-free life."
