I’m actually a nice guy, an Algerian terrorist insisted as he was sentenced yesterday to 10 years in prison for plotting to blow up some city synagogues and churches.
“I was taught by my parents to respect all people,” claimed Ahmed Ferhani, an unemployed aspiring actor who was busted buying guns, ammo and an inert hand grenade in May 2011.
But surveillance transcripts obtained by The Post paint a far more unstable and hate-filled portrait of the convicted Islamic bomb plotter.
In the days before his arrest, the transcripts show, Ferhani gleefully imagined the “ruckus and chaos” he could cause by simultaneous explosions in multiple houses of worship.
“They — they — they gonna start going crazy,” he imagines, during a May 3, 2011, conversation with an unnamed undercover detective.
“F–king putting crazy security. You know what I’m saying . . . I think the best thing to do is do all of it in one night. Hit two of them in one night. Or three of them in one night.”
A week later, Ferhani, 28, of Queens, was talking about hitting no fewer than 10 synagogues and some churches, too.
“I wanna mastermind this s–t to the point where — man, I’m attaching a f–king one of them things on like 10 synagogues all over New York City and with one transmission button we blow all them motherf–kers up the at the same time. Imagine that . . . imagine the ruckus and chaos . . . with a few churches and the synagogues.
“All, all at the same time, same — know what I’m saying? Imagine that, bro. Imagine what that would leave.”
Two days later, Ferhani was giddy with excitement as he purchased three guns, ammo and the inoperable grenade. “Can you get bulletproof vests?” he asked, according to the transcript. “Silencers? Police, um, radio interceptors? And how much for the box of grenades?”
“This is for the cause,” Ferhani explains. “Brothers is getting abused all over, all over the world, like, spit on like we dogs,” he says. “I ain’t going to accept it.”
Neither would society accept his sick agenda, Manhattan prosecutors told him at the sentencing.
“This defendant walked far across the bridge of and to terrorism,” senior rackets prosecutor Gary Galperin told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Michael Obus. “Now that this bridge is crossed, this defendant must stand and watch it burn.”
Ferhani’s lawyers brokered his December guilty plea to terror conspiracy and conspiracy as a hate crime despite maintaining that he was mentally gullible and had been entrapped.
The case against accused co-conspirator Mohamed Mamdouh is still pending.