Sentence 25 years in plot to bomb Saudi

NEW YORK - An Iranian-American used-car salesman from Texas who was accused of plotting to hire assassins from a Mexican drug cartel to murder Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States was sentenced to 25 years in prison Thursday.

The man, Manssor Arbabsiar, a naturalized U.S. citizen living in Corpus Christi, Texas, was arrested on Sept. 29, 2011, at Kennedy International Airport and ultimately pleaded guilty to his role in the bizarre scheme.

When the case, with a plotline that seemed scripted from a Hollywood movie, was made public, it riveted Washington and raised already heightened tensions between Saudi Arabia’s ruling Sunni royal family and the Shiite-controlled government in Iran.

At the time of Arbabsiar’s arrest, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said that the plot had been “directed and approved by elements of the Iranian government and, specifically, senior members of the Quds force,” which is part of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

The Iranian government has denied that it had anything to do with the plot.

The plan, according to government officials, involved Arbabsiar paying a member of the Los Zetas drug cartel $1.5 million to plant a bomb at a Washington restaurant while the Saudi ambassador, Adel al-Jubeir, dined. However, Arbabsiar’s contact with the Mexican cartel turned out to be an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, who quickly alerted U.S. authorities.

Authorities said Arbabsiar had confessed to his role in the plot and provided valuable intelligence about Iran’s role in supporting the plan. He claimed that his cousin, a member of the Quds Force, recruited him to carry out the plot, according to authorities.

That man, Gholam Shakuri, remains at large.

After Arbabsiar’s arrest, authorities said that he “knowingly and voluntarily” waived his rights to remain silent, to have a lawyer present during his interrogation and to be taken speedily before a judge, and that he provided his cooperation.

Though Arbabsiar, 58, was originally charged with offenses that carried a maximum sentence of life in prison, he ultimately pleaded guilty in October to three counts for which he faced a maximum of 25 years. The charges included conspiracy to commit an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries and two countsrelated to murder-for-hire.

After Arbabsiar pleaded guilty, the case shifted to whether he should receive 25 years, as the U.S. attorney’s office had sought, or less.

The defense had sought a 10-year term, arguing, among other things, that Arbabsiar’s crime had been the result of a long-standing, untreated bipolar disorder, and that when he was recruited into the plot by his cousin in Iran, he was in a deep depression after business failures and the deaths of his best friend and his father.

“He felt like a complete failure,” Dr. Michael First, a Columbia University professor of clinical psychiatry retained by the defense, testified in a presentence hearing May 8. “He was extremely down on himself. His life was a wreck. He hated himself. He was having suicidal thoughts.”

In a report filed with the judge, First quoted from interviews he had conductedwith Arbabsiar, who recalled his cousin’s asking for his assistance and his feeling immediately uplifted. “Here was my cousin, a very powerful man in Iran, with connections to the government and army, asking me to help him,” Arbabsiar said. He said that he felt he had “a purpose” and that it was “like a drug to me,” like he had been given cocaine, he said.

But a psychiatrist retained by the government, Dr. Gregory Saathoff of the University of Virginia, disagreed with the defense expert’s findings, testifying in another hearing Wednesday that he did not believe Arbabsiar was suffering from a bipolar disorder.

Saathoff met with Arbabsiar last year over six sessions for a total of about 32 hours, according to a report he filed in October, when Arbabsiar’s lawyer, Sabrina Shroff, a federal public defender, was seeking to have Arbabsiar’s statements tothe FBI suppressed on grounds that he was suffering from a serious mental illness when he agreed to cooperate with authorities after his arrest and after waiving his right to a lawyer or a speedy court appearance.

Front Section, Pages 2 on 05/31/2013

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