Briton sentenced for plotting to blow up Israeli and US travellers at Heathrow

A British citizen who plotted a suicide bomb attack at Heathrow Airport, targeting passengers arriving from Israel and America, has been jailed for 40 years in the US.

Prosecutors said Minh Quang Pham, 33, was directed by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula leader Anwar Al-Awlaki to detonate explosives in Heathrow's arrivals area after spending several months in Yemen being trained by him.

According to court reports in the New York Times, Pham claimed that al-Awlaki told him to target the arrivals area for flights from Israel or the US.

In January, Pham admitted three counts of terrorist activity as a result of his support for the terror group but denied that he ever intended to carry out his Heathrow plot. No attack ever actually occurred. He pleaded guilty to one count of providing material support to AQAP, one count of conspiring to receive military training from AQAP and one count of possessing and using a machine gun with the aim of committing violent crimes.

Pham, a former Vietnamese national who had lived in London, was arrested in the UK in June 2012 and extradited to the US in February 2015.

District Judge Alison Nathan said Pham, a former graphic artist on the group's magazine, Inspire, deserved an "exceptionally severe sentence" after he became a trusted asset for the terror group.