‘Secret’ terrorist gets life in embassy plot

In court Friday, his lawyer, Kenneth Paul, told the judge it was all a misunderstanding. The knife, he said, was for personal protection because of death threats received by his family. The extremist writings were notes taken on terrorist videos that he had been asked to watch as part of the investigation.

"It's just ridiculous," Paul said of the allegation that Jabarah was compiling a death list. He didn't comment in detail on the other writings in which his client appeared to express disgust with America and muse on how he might return to terrorism if he were ever freed.

An attempt to re-enlist Jabarah as an informant failed in 2006.

Both sides agreed that, by then, he had soured on American law enforcement and was unwilling to cut a new deal.

"He could have been a great cooperating witness," Assistant U.S. Attorney David Raskin lamented during the hearing Friday. He said Jabarah knew enough to build indictments against several terrorist leaders, but instead chose to remain loyal to bin Laden. "He was not interested in saving lives."

Sitting before the judge, Jabarah said he had been brainwashed by people he thought were liberators of an oppressed people. "They were nothing more than terrorists," he said, and he deplored their killings as "absolutely disgusting, sickening and perverted."

Jones told Jabarah she would have found his statements more compelling if he had agreed to resume his cooperation with the government.

She said that regardless of his words now, Jabarah engaged in the "most serious criminal conduct" and that the decisions he made as a young man resulted in "a waste of a life that could otherwise have been very productive."

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