
Salim
A follow-up to the previous post. (Thanks to Basil.)
NEW YORK (CNN) — More than three years after he stabbed a jail guard in the eye, a top aide to Osama bin Laden who was in U.S. custody before the September 11 terrorist attacks was sentenced Monday to 32 years in prison.
U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts in Manhattan federal court sentenced Mamdouh Mahmud Salim for attempted murder. Salim pleaded guilty two years ago to the November 1, 2000, stabbing of corrections officer Louis Pepe with a comb sharpened into a shank.
Batts previously decided that Salim, 46, would face 17 to 22 years behind bars based on federal sentencing guidelines.
Last year she ruled against the government’s contention that Salim’s sentence should be considered terrorism-related because it was related to an effort to influence the outcome of a trial where he was one of the original defendants — the trial of al Qaeda soldiers for the 1998 truck bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Prosecutors also pointed to threatening notes in Salim’s cell as evidence of a hostage-taking plan.
The notes said, “We are the Muslims who were falsly (sic) accused of bombing the embassy in Africa. … If the government worrys (sic) about the safty (sic) of its citizines (sic) it has to comply with all our demands.”
Salim denied the Pepe assault was a plot to take hostages but said he had considered escaping to the United Nations and declaring refugee status.
Ah. So it seems that even Salim has learned to play the game, at least to some degree.