Shoe bomber Reid jailed for life after admitting attack

The so-called shoe bomb-er, Richard Reid, a British citizen and former member of the al-Qa'ida terrorist network, was sentenced to life in prison last night for attempting to blow up an American Airlines jet on a flight from Paris to Miami.

In pleading guilty last October, Reid, 29, said he had been driven to blow up the aircraft by a love for Islam. His plot was thwarted when passengers and crew members overpowered him after he was seen trying to light a fuse protruding from a shoe lined with plastic explosives.

Before hearing his fate in a Boston courtroom, Reid made a brief statement, lashing out at the American government.

"Your government has sponsored the torture of Muslims in Iraq and Turkey, and Jordan and Syria with their money and weapons," he said. He then told the judge: "It's in your hands."

The near-catastrophe on the plane, with 197 people on board, happened on 22 December 2001. Reid's subsequent interrogation led police in Britain and France to arrest terrorist suspects.

Judge William Young rejected calls from Reid's lawyers to defer sentencing on seven of the eight charges against him pending the release of classified documents. The remaining charge, of using a destructive device during a crime of violence, would have meant a term of 30 years.

The hearing included testimony from witnesses on the plane. Flight attendant Carole Nelson said: "Richard Reid was on a mission of evil, a mission of destruction and a mission of murder. Richard Reid put all of us on this flight under great stress and trauma."

Before the hearing, defence lawyers said that Reid, who converted to Islam eight years ago, was angry at American foreign policy toward Iraq and other Muslim sates. They said their client "is convinced that the United States, by sanctions on Iraq, has killed two million children in Iraq".

In court papers, Reid's lawyers said their client "well knew that he would cause untold pain and grief even if only a few people were killed, but he says that this was outweighed in his mind by his firm belief ... that this country in recent years has caused the deaths of millions of Muslims".

The lawyers also said that his conversion to Islam had saved him from a youth of poverty and despair.

Earlier this month, British police raided the Finsbury Park Mosque, where Reid was once a worshipper, and arrested seven men. Charges against three of them were dropped last week. Among 20 people arrested by French authorities in December, one was an imam believed to have helped Reid.

Reid, who has a British mother and a Jamaican father, said he wished to spare his family the embarrassment of a lengthy trial when he pleaded guilty.

Prosecutors argued for a tough punishment in their submissions to the court and called Reid "a committed terrorist who will remain so until his dying days.

"By his own words, Reid refuses to apologise for attempting to kill 200 people," US attorney Michael Sullivan wrote. "Perhaps even more appalling, he blames the American people for the horrendous attacks and casualties caused by the al-Qaida terrorism organisation to which he claims allegiance."