A British man says he’s ready to cut a plea deal with Manhattan federal prosecutors admitting he conspired with handless hate preacher Abu Hamza al-Masri to set up an al Qaeda training camp in Oregon.
Peter Quijano, a lawyer for reputed al-Masri lieutenant Haroon Rashid Aswat, told Manhattan federal Judge Katherine Forrest during a conference Tuesday that his client and the government have reached an “agreement in principle.”
Quijano afterwards said he expects a deal “as soon as possible” and “that a few random issues need to be resolved.”
Aswat, a 40-year-old British citizen of Indian descent, was extradited to the US in October after spending nearly 10 years in custody in the United Kingdom.
He is accused of conspiring with al-Masri and others to convert a 160-acre ranch in Bly, Ore., between 1999 and 2000 into a terror camp that would train fighters before they were sent to Afghanistan to wage religious war.
Forrest sentenced al-Masri, a one-eyed, hook-handed imam, to life in prison in January following his May 2014 terror conviction on charges of conspiring in a 1998 kidnapping in Yemen that resulted in the death of four terrorists, setting up the terror training camp and other terror crimes.
If Aswat goes to trial in June, he faces up to 35 years behind bars should he be convicted.
Aswat was extradited to the US in October. The al-Masri crony had been fighting extradition since his 2005 arrest and was in a high-security medical facility in the United Kingdom, where he was being treated for paranoid schizophrenia.
The European Court of Human Rights last year ruled that extradition could worsen his mental health, but two British High Court judges overturned that decision after receiving assurances from the feds that he’d be properly cared for in the US.