Jihad reward
City Al Qaeda guy to go free for giving intel
A HOMEGROWN ex-Al Qaeda member will soon walk free after spending more than eight years giving invaluable counterterrorism intelligence to the feds.
Bryant Neal Vinas helped foil several attacks, including a Long Island Rail Road bomb plot, and testified against a would-be subway suicide bomber.
Vinas, who was born in Queens and raised in Patchogue, L.I., helped the feds close more than 30 criminal cases. He sat through approximately 100 interviews and sifted through 1,000 photographs to help authorities confirm their understanding, debunk misconceptions and find leads in the war on terror.
For all that work, Vinas, 34, got a sentence Thursday of time served — plus 90 days — for admitting in 2009 to once plotting to kill Americans when he traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan bent on jihad.
Without the substantial assistance he gave to law enforcement, Vinas was looking at a sentence of 30 years to life.
“Put simply, Mr. Vinas’ cooperation has been extraordinary,” Brooklyn Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis said, noting Vinas would keep facing the risks for being a terrorism cooperator as long as he lived.
The judge noted he had to think both ways when making a sentence for Vinas. He had to deter anyone thinking about terrorism, but he also didn’t want to deter cooperators as well.
The extra 90 days time will allow for Vinas’ security arrangements. He's mostly been in solitary confinement.
Talking about his time with Al Qaeda, Vinas said there was “no excuse to justify what I did. I blame no one but myself.”
But all his time in custody gave him some time to think, said Vinas, who wore a
gray sweatshirt, thickframed glasses and a ponytail.
“I would like to turn a bad thing into a good thing,” he said.
Vinas said he hoped to get into counterterrorism work some day.
If that didn’t pan out, Vinas said he'd want to get into construction and “earn a blue-collar living.”
Vinas was born Roman Catholic, but converted to Islam in 2004. The feds said that in 2007, Vinas traveled overseas looking to carry out jihad, first to Pakistan and later Afghanistan.