(AP) A New Jersey software developer who prosecutors say once photographed landmarks in New York, Boston and Washington, D.C., for possible terrorist attacks was sentenced Tuesday to 12 years in prison by a federal judge who said it seemed he no longer was a danger.
In fact, Judge Paul G. Gardephe noted, Alexei Saab, 46, has become a model prisoner since his 2019 arrest, helping others incarcerated at New York City’s federal jails to get high school equivalency certificates, learn English and find relief from psychological problems.
Gardephe called Saab’s 2005 exit from his relationship with the Lebanon-based Hezbollah Islamic Jihad Organization and the “peaceful and productive” life he lived in the New York City area afterward among “inconvenient facts” that made it impossible to grant the government’s request that Saab be incarcerated for 20 years.
