The Queens imam who lied to the FBI about tipping off subway suicide-bomb plotters was given a wrist slap yesterday by a Brooklyn federal judge who sentenced him to the four days he’s already served in jail.
Ahmad Wais Afzali, 38, had been facing six months in the clink after pleading guilty to lying to authorities about telling convicted suicide subway bomb plotter Najibullah Zazi that federal agents were following him.
But despite his break, he will have to leave the country in 90 days or be deported to his native Afghanistan under the plea agreement.
Zazi, who is also from Afghanistan and who the feds say had three co-conspirators, planned to murder hundreds of New Yorkers by detonating homemade backpack bombs in the Manhattan subways during rush hour.
Afzali, who worked as an informant for the NYPD, told Zazi that his phones were tapped, but warned him not to get involved in “nonsense” in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The al Qaeda-trained bomb plotter aborted his plan, threw away his bomb material and fled the city after Afzali spilled the news that the law was onto him.
“I take full responsibility for my actions,” he told the judge yesterday.
“Honest to God, it was never my intention to help those idiots for what they do in the name of Islam.
“I apologize . . . I am pleading for mercy. I am not a bad man. The spiritual and psychological burden is far greater than any sentence you can impose.”
Afzali, who knew Zazi and his alleged cohorts Adis Medunjanin and Zarein Ahmedzay from their youth at a Flushing mosque, spent four days in jail beginning Sept. 20. His lawyer, Ron Kuby, maintains that his client was a loyal American double-crossed by the FBI.
“We know that Imam Afzali did his best to help law enforcement,” said Kuby. “He provided the assistance that they requested of him. He didn’t ask for a reward. He didn’t ask for a lawyer. He didn’t ask, what’s in it for him?”
Kuby claims it was the FBI, not his client, that tipped off Zazi that he was being followed, but prosecutors strongly disagreed.
“Regardless of Zazi’s suspicions before encountering Afzali, the fact is that there were two additional al Qaeda-trained suicide bombers under investigation, Adis Medunjanin and Zarein Ahmedzay, and Afzali’s actions alerted them that they were under scrutiny as well. This compromised the investigation,” federal prosecutor Jeffrey Knox wrote in a letter to the judge.
Under the plea negotiations with the feds, Afzali will have to leave the United States and never return. The imam, who also runs a successful funeral parlor in Queens, will have to leave behind his wife, elderly parents and his children.
“I’m going to go back to my house, visit my family and friends, give them a big hug and start planning for my long journey ahead,” he told reporters outside the courthouse.
Afzali said he does not expect to return to Afghanistan, which he left as a child.
“I’m going to start shopping around [for a place to live]. I’m sure some good country will host me. That shouldn’t be a problem,” he said.