Boston
Richard Reid last week admitted trying to blow up a jetliner with explosives hidden in his shoe and declared himself a loyal follower of Osama bin Laden. “Basically I got on the plane with a bomb,” said Reid, 29. “Basically I tried to ignite it. Basically, yeah, I tried to damage the plane.” Reid, a British citizen, won no leniency for his plea. He said he wanted to spare his family the pain of a trial. Reid will be sentenced in January. Prosecutors said they would ask that he be sent to prison for at least 60 years for trying to kill 197 people flying from Paris to Miami in December. In another court in Virginia, a judge sentenced a Californian, John Walker Lindh, to 20 years in prison for fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan. “You made a bad choice,” Judge T.S. Ellis told Lindh.
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