Appeals Court Declines to Cut 30-Year Sentence for Terrorist Linked to Multiple Plots

The federal appeals court ruled that the original judge had the discretion to reject a resentencing hearing for the al-Qaeda operative.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) in Washington on March 10, 2025. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

A federal appeals court on April 21 rejected a convicted al-Qaeda terrorist’s bid for a reduced sentence over his role in a thwarted bombing plot targeting Manchester, England—linked to other planned attacks in the United States and Denmark—affirming that a lower court acted within its discretion by denying a new sentencing hearing.

In a summary order issued Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit sided with the U.S. government, finding that a district court judge was justified in denying the resentencing proceeding for Abid Naseer, a Pakistani national convicted in 2015 for conspiring to provide material support to al-Qaeda and other crimes.

Naseer was originally sentenced to 40 years in prison. In 2022, U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie vacated one of Naseer’s convictions—using a destructive device in relation to a crime of violence—after the U.S. Supreme Court narrowed the legal definition of such crimes in United States v. Davis.

As a result, the court reduced Naseer’s sentence from 40 years to 30 years but declined to conduct a full resentencing hearing.

The Second Circuit’s April 21 ruling affirms the revised 30-year sentence and rejects Naseer’s argument that he should have been resentenced from scratch. The court concluded that the district judge’s long-standing familiarity with the case and the absence of new mitigating factors made a full hearing unnecessary.

Naseer’s case—tried in Brooklyn federal court following his extradition from the United Kingdom—stemmed from his role in a 2009 plot to detonate explosives in a crowded shopping center in Manchester, England. U.S. prosecutors described the attack as part of a coordinated, three-pronged terrorist operation targeting Western cities, with linked plots aimed at the New York City subway system and a newspaper office in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Naseer was arrested in the UK in April 2009, just days before the planned Manchester attack. During his 2015 trial, British intelligence officers testified under disguise to protect their identities, and Naseer represented himself in court, preparing his defense from jail.

“This al-Qaeda plot was intended by the group’s leaders and Naseer to send a message to the United States and its allies,” Robert Capers, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a Nov. 24, 2015, statement on the day a judge handed down Naseer’s 40-year punishment. “Today’s sentence sends an even more powerful message in response: terrorists who target the U.S. and its allies will be held accountable for their violent crimes to the full extent of the law.”

Although Naseer was not charged in the U.S. or Denmark plots, authorities alleged he communicated and coordinated with other al-Qaeda operatives involved in those planned attacks—making him part of the broader conspiracy.

After the reduction of his sentence to 30 years, Naseer asked the court to reduce his sentence to 15 years. He argued in his appeal that the district court had erred by not holding a full resentencing hearing.

But the appeals court found no abuse of discretion. Quoting Dearie’s resentencing decision, the panel noted, “Although Naseer’s counts of conviction now change with the vacatur of Count Ten, the conduct in which he engaged and for which this Court deemed a forty-year sentence appropriate, has not.”

The appellate judges also cited the district court’s finding that Naseer continued to show “no remorse” and offered no evidence of changed thinking that might reduce the risk he posed.

Naseer’s attorney, Randa Maher, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.