A federal judge on Thursday ordered a Muslim cleric to leave the United States for lying to the FBI in connection with a probe into a plot to blow up New York City subways, a US justice official said.
In a sentencing hearing in Brooklyn, US District Judge Frederic Block told Ahmad Afzali, 39, he must leave within 90 days or be deported to his native Afghanistan, said Robert Nardoza, spokesman for the US Attorney's Office in Brooklyn.
Afzali faced up to six months in prison.
An imam in the New York City borough of Queens, he was arrested in 2009 as part of an investigation into what US attorney general Eric Holder called one of the most serious security threats to the United States since the Sept 11 attacks in 2001.
Afzali was accused of tipping off Najibullah Zazi that he was under investigation, forcing authorities to bring Zazi in for questioning sooner than planned. Earlier this year Zazi admitted he had received weapons and training from al Qaeda and plotted a suicide attack on the city''s subways in rush hour.
The cleric, a self-proclaimed pro-American imam who cooperated with police in previous investigations, lied about the tip-off when questioned by the FBI, prosecutors said.
Afzali pleaded guilty last month to charges of lying to law enforcement officials in a deal with prosecutors who agreed to drop a more serious charge of obstructing a terrorism investigation. He agreed to waive his right to appeal.
His defence team sought to portray him as an unwitting suspect, who had no knowledge of what Zazi was planning, but the prosecution contended that the cleric was deliberately misleading law enforcement.
"Afzali is many things, but naive is not one of them. He knew that what he did was wrong, and that is the reason why he hid it from the NYPD (New York Police Department) and later lied about it to the FBI," prosecutors said in a recent court document said.
Zazi, who moved to Queens from Afghanistan as a teenager and attended a mosque led by Afzali, will be sentenced in June.
