World

U.S. authorities have taken rare action to strip U.S. citizenship from a man convicted in 2003 of involvement in an Al-Qaeda plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City.

The Justice Department on March 20 filed a civil suit to revoke the citizenship of Iyman Faris, a Pakistan native who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for supporting the terrorist organization. He is due to be released in 2020.

The department said Faris lied to gain citizenship and fraudulently used another man's passport to gain entry into the United States in 1994.

"The Department's Office of Immigration Litigation will continue to pursue denaturalization proceedings against known or suspected terrorists who procured their citizenship by fraud," acting Assistant Attorney General Chad Readler said.

"The U.S. government is dedicated to...preventing the exploitation of our nation's immigration system by those who would do harm to our country," he said.

Faris previously admitted to investigating how blowtorches could be used to sever the Brooklyn Bridge's suspension cables as part of an Al-Qaeda plot, but said he concluded in 2002 that security was too tight around the bridge to carry out an attack.

Based on reporting by AP and The Washington Times

A man born in Saudi Arabia has been convicted in a U.S. federal court on charges he participated in a 2003 attack in Afghanistan that killed two U.S. servicemen.

A jury in Brooklyn, New York, deliberated for just two hours on March 16 before reaching the guilty verdict against admitted Al-Qaeda fighter Ibrahim Suleiman Adnan Harun.

Harun, who was not in court and watched the trial from his jail cell, was extradited from Italy in October 2012.

He has insisted he is a "warrior" who should face a military tribunal rather than a criminal court.

Harun, who holds Niger citizenship, traveled to Afghanistan to join Al-Qaeda weeks before the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States, prosecutors said.

They said he took part in an assault on U.S. troops in 2003 that killed Army Private 1st Class Jerod Dennis, 19, and Air Force Airman 1st Class Raymond Losano, 24.

A Koran recovered at the site had Harun's fingerprints, prosecutors said.

He also was convicted of later plotting to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AP