Too bad. Simple justice would dictate that he stay here — to do some well-deserved federal prison time.
Afzali tipped off three would-be suicide bombers — who were plotting what’s been called the deadliest potential attack here since 9/11 — that police were on to them. Yet he now walks free by copping a plea.
The Afghani citizen has portrayed himself as a do-gooder, anxiously trying to steer the plotters away from “Iraq garbage or Afghanistan garbage.”
“It was never my intention to help those idiots,” he claimed.
Maybe not — if he can be believed. But help them is exactly what he did.
“Afzali is many things, but naive is not one of them,” prosecutor Jeffrey Knox wrote to the presiding judge. “He knew that what he did was wrong, and that is the reason why he hid it from the NYPD and later lied about it to the FBI.”
Afzali, a sometime police informer, was approached by cops last fall and asked if he knew the plotters. When he said he did, he was asked to try and find out what they were doing in New York.
So what did Afzali do?
He went to one of the suspects and told him point-blank that police were asking about him and his phone was being tapped.
That “compromised the investigati on,” according to Knox, and the suspects were arrested.
After being confronted, Afzali flat-out denied to both local and federal cops that he’d tipped anyone. Which is why he deserved to spend more time behind bars — even if just the six months he faced on a charge of lying to authorities.
And then he could have been kicked out of this country for good.
All this adds up to further evidence militating against trusting the standard criminal-justice system to deal properly with terrorism cases.
As if any more were needed. (SOURCE NY POST)
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