Rana sentenced for aiding terrorists

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CHICAGO, Jan. 17 (UPI) -- Tahawwur Hussain Rana was sentenced to 14 years in prison for charges including aiding terrorists responsible for a massacre in Mumbai, U.S. prosecutors said.

Rana, a Pakistani native and Canadian citizen, was convicted in June 2011 of conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist plot in Denmark and providing material support to Lashkar-e-Toiba, a Pakistani terrorist organization responsible for the November 2008 massacre in Mumbai, in which more than 160 people -- including six Americans -- were killed, the U.S. Justice Department said in a news release Thursday.

The terrorist plot in Denmark included plans to decapitate employees of the newspaper Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten and throw their heads onto the street in Copenhagen.

Prosecutors said the plot, from October 2008 to October 2009, was meant as retaliation for the newspaper's publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed.

"This certainly was a dastardly plot," U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber said in imposing the sentence on Rana, 52.

Leinenweber ordered Rana to serve five years of supervised release at the end of his prison term.

Rana -- who was acquitted of conspiracy to provide material support to the Mumbai attacks -- is one of two defendants convicted, among a total of eight defendants who have been indicted in the case.

David Coleman Headley, 52, pleaded guilty in March 2010 to 12 terrorism charges, including aiding and abetting the murders of the six Americans in Mumbai. Headley is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 24.