US District Judge Barbara S. Jones said she gave Jabarah credit for his repudiation of violence, but said she could not overlook what he had done. "Actions speak louder than words," she said.
Jabarah was captured in Oman after his bombing plot collapsed. He has been in US custody since 2002, when he was turned over to the FBI by Canada's intelligence service and secretly pleaded guilty to terrorism charges as part of a short-lived plea bargain.
For a time, he was a valuable resource in the hunt for Al Qaeda leaders.
During the few months of his cooperation with the FBI, Jabarah gave investigators information about Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, described his personal meetings with Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, and detailed his interactions with several other high-ranking Al Qaeda lieutenants.
He also described his own involvement in a terrorist plot. After graduating from high school in Canada, where he had lived since a move from Kuwait at age 12, Jabarah slipped into Afghanistan and trained at Al Qaeda camps in 2001. Prosecutors said he became a protégé of Mohammed and was preparing for the planned embassy attacks.
"This is far from a half-baked plot," said Assistant US Attorney Jennifer Rodgers, noting that tons of explosives had been purchased and a suicide bomber selected when the scheme was foiled by a round of arrests.
"Mr. Jabarah is the real deal," Rodgers said.
After his capture by Oman's intelligence service, Jabarah was brought to Canada, where he was interrogated and told he had two choices: Go to the US military prison in at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or switch sides and inform on his terrorist mentors.
Jabarah chose the later, and by July 2002 he had pleaded guilty in a closed-court session and moved into a series of FBI safe houses in the United States.
His work as an informant, however, ended after just a few months, when FBI agents searching his quarters discovered jihadist writings, a knife, and rope hidden in his luggage and instructions on how to make explosives. They also found a list bearing the initials of US agents and prosecutors. Investigators believed it was a list of people Jabarah intended to kill.
