Australian gets 20 years for terror plot
An Australian convicted of trying to buy bomb-making materials and purchasing maps of the country's power grid was sentenced to 20 years in prison today.
Faheem Khalid Lodhi, 36, a Pakistan-born architect, was convicted by a New South Wales Supreme Court jury in June on three charges of plotting a terrorist attack in Australia.
Lodhi’s was one of the first cases launched under tough and controversial anti-terror laws passed in Australia in response to the September 11 2001, terrorist attacks in the US.
The judge sentenced Lodhi to 20 years on the charge of making inquiries about buying chemicals that could be used to make explosives. He was sentenced to 10 years each on charges of buying the maps and having an Urdu-language manual outlining terrorist techniques.
The sentences were to be served concurrently, and were backdated to the time of his arrest in 2004.
He will be eligible for parole in 2019.
