An al Qaeda techno-geek from Brooklyn who was part of a “terror cell” that plotted to bomb the New York Stock Exchange was sentenced Tuesday to 15 years behind bars.
Wesam El-Hanafi had faced up to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty in 2012 to providing equipment and $67,000 in funds to the terror group and also teaching its members how to evade detection on the Internet.
But Manhattan federal Judge Kimba Wood cut the 39-year-old some slack, saying he’s expressed “remorse” for “blindly following” al Qaeda’s ideology and since his April 2010 surrender “has suffered considerably” in custody from deep vein thrombosis — a disease that creates painful blood clots in the legs.
The 15-year jail sentence includes nearly five years’ time served.
Manhattan Assistant US Attorney John Cronan said El-Hanafi, a former Lehman Bros. employee who has a wife and three children, “was living the American dream.”
“Then he turned his back on his country and pledged allegiance to our greatest enemies,” he said.
El-Hanafi — who is currently suing the US for failing to provide him proper medical care — apologized for his actions and claimed he’s “committed” to living a “law-abiding life.”
“I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on my actions and their consequences,” he said. “I didn’t just make the wrong choices, I made the worst choices. I take full responsibility, I’ve learned my lesson and will not go down this path again.”
The feds say the Egyptian-American was part of a mini terror cell that conducted surveillance and made — but ultimately abandoned — plans to blow up the New York Stock Exchange.
El-Hanafi met with two al Qaeda members in Yemen in 2008, and he taught them how to modernize the terror network’s IT capabilities and also bought seven Casio digital watches, potentially to use as timers for terrorist bombs.
He also instructed the members of al Qaeda on how to communicate covertly over the Web to avoid law enforcement detection, prosecutors say.
El-Hanafi had two American cohorts: fellow Brooklynite Sabirhan Hasanoff and Kansas City auto parts dealer Khalid Quazzani.
Quazzani later turned rat.
Hasanoff, a number-crunching terrorist spy, was sentenced in 2013 to 20 years in jail including two years’ time served.
The former PricewaterhouseCoopers accountant cased the New York Stock Exchange for the al Qaeda bomb plot.
