UK Man Sentenced for Terror

Barot had planned to detonate limousines filled with gas cylinders in underground car parks and plotted to set off a bomb under the river Thames to flood the London underground rail network and potentially drown hundreds of commuters.

"This was no noble cause," judge Alexander Butterfield told Barot Tuesday as he handed down the sentence at Woolwich Crown Court in London. "Your plans were to bring indiscriminate carnage, bloodshed and butchery first in Washington, New York and Newark, and thereafter the UK on a colossal and unprecedented scale."

Terrorist targets

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington, as well as the New York Stock Exchange, the Citigroup headquarters and the Prudential building in Newark, New Jersey were also allegedly targets.

Barot, 34, was born in India and came to Britain with his parents a year later. He converted to Islam in his 20s. He was placed under surveillance in April, 2004, following a tip-off from the intelligence authorities in Pakistan, and arrested in London in August, 2004.

Barot, who pleaded guilty last month to plotting the deadly bombings, has said he had planned a "black day for the enemies of Islam and a victory for the Muslims."

"You are, Mr Barot, a determined and dedicated terrorist, a highly intelligent and extremely dangerous man," Butterfield said. "This conspiracy was designed to strike at the very heart of democracy and the security of the state."

Experienced terrorist

Barot's 40-year minimum jail term is one of the toughest sentences ever handed down by a British judge, making the defendant not eligible for parole until he is 74 years old.

Peter Clarke, the head of the Metropolitan Police's anti-terrorist branch, described Barot as a "determined and experienced terrorist." Barot is believed to have had links to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terror network.

"He went to terrorist training camps in 1995, long before 9/11 or the invasions of Afghanistan or Iraq. He is not someone who has recently been attracted to the terrorist cause," Clarke said after the sentencing. "He is a full-time terrorist. His training showed through. He used anti-surveillance coded messages in secret meetings, but he could not evade capture."

London has been on high alert since July 2005, when four British Islamist suicide bombers detonated simultaneous explosions on the Underground and a bus, killing themselves and 52 other people. Seven alleged co-conspirators are due to face trial next year.