By Mustafa Caglayan
NEW YORK
A New York man who funneled more than $60,000 to al-Qaeda and surveilled the New York Stock Exchange for a potential terrorist attack was sentenced to 15 years in prison, a U.S. attorney announced Tuesday.
"Today’s sentence is a fitting punishment for these crimes and we will continue, with our law enforcement partners, to pursue punishment for those who provide and conspire to provide material support for terrorists," said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
Wesam el-Hanafi, 39, pleaded guilty of providing financial assistance to al-Qaeda in 2012, two years after his arrest in the United Arab Emirates.
Prosecutors said el-Hanafi, together with his co-defendant Sabirhan Hasanoff, sent approximately $67,000 and other materials including remote control bombs to the terror group’s members from 2007 through late 2009.
"At the direction of his Yemen-based terrorist contacts, el-Hanafi assigned Hasanoff to perform surveillance of locations in the United States, including the New York Stock Exchange in Manhattan, as potential targets of a terrorist attack by al-Qaeda," read a statement from U.S. Attorney's Office in Southern District of New York.
"El-Hanafi received Hasanoff’s report of his surveillance of the New York Stock Exchange, and sent that report to the terrorist operatives in Yemen," according to the statement.
Hasanoff was sentenced to 18 years in prison in September 2013.
Prosecutors also say el-Hanafi taught terror groups in Yemen about covert Internet communications techniques and supplied them with encryption tools that would facilitate communicating without detection.
