LONDON — A confessed al-Qaeda terrorist yesterday was handed one of the toughest prison sentences ever imposed in a British court — a life term for multiple plots to bomb US financial targets such as the New York Stock Exchange, luxury London hotels and train stations.The plans — which included plots to blow up stretch limousines packed with gas tanks, napalm and nails — were designed to wreak indiscriminate bloodshed, Judge Neil Butterfield told Dhiren Barot — who stared blankly ahead as he was told he would not be eligible for parole for at least 40 years.

Barot, a 34-year-old British convert to Islam, is still wanted by the United States and Yemen on separate terror-related charges.

“There are thousands and thousands of ordinary, decent, hardworking, law-abiding Muslims — British citizens just like you — who have to live their lives under a deep cloud of suspicion and distrust caused by you and others like you,” said Butterfield in a blistering rebuke of Barot.

Details of the planned attacks in London — a plot that included simultaneous strikes against a subway train as it passed below the River Thames in a tunnel — resurrected fears of the July 7 suicide bombings that killed 52 people aboard three subways and a bus last year. The bombings deepened divisions between Muslims and non-Muslims, provoking an angry debate in Britain over religious tolerance and ethnic assimilation.

Barot’s capture and sentence was seen as a major blow against homegrown terrorists as the first major conviction since the threat from British extremists was exposed in the July 7 bombings.

Investigators said Barot travelled the globe to gain terrorist training and met alleged Asian terror chief Hambali and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the so-called mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, attacks, which killed an estimated 3,000 people in the United States.

“He is a long-term, dedicated, committed member of al-Qaeda,” said Peter Clarke, Britain’s most senior anti-terrorist detective.

The 40-year minimum sentence is among the highest prison sentences meted out in Britain. Although judges can sentence convicted murderers to life without the possibility of parole, only about 25 people have received jail terms that condemn them to die behind bars.

Patrick Magee, an IRA hitman who attempted to kill former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher when he carried out the bombing of a southern England hotel in 1984 — was sentenced to life without possibility of parole for 35 years.

Barot, a British citizen who was born in India but raised in London, began plotting in 2000 to attack a host of financial industry targets in the United States, but investigators said he shelved the plan after the September 11, 2001 attacks, focusing his efforts on ways to detonate limousines packed with gas tanks, napalm and nails.

He planned to blow up the limousines under London landmark hotels such as The Ritz and The Savoy, and railway stations such as London’s Waterloo, Paddington and King’s Cross, prosecutor Edmund Lawson said at the two-day sentencing hearing. Barot fantasised about blowing up a subway train as it traveled in a tunnel below the River Thames — an attack that could “cause pandemonium ... explosions, flooding, drowning,” according to documents filed to the court. Other planned attacks involved building a radioactive dirty bomb and exploding a petrol tanker.

The British attacks were “imminent” at the time of Barot’s arrest in 2004, although prosecutors said an exact time frame was not known.

“The conspiracy was in its final stages,” Lawson said, saying that in February 2004 Barot had submitted detailed proposals to al-Qaeda financiers in Pakistan. It said the limousine plan required a six-man team and would kill hundreds. He estimated the cost would be about $60 (US$115,000; euro90,000).

Proposals for the British attacks and strikes against the International Monetary Fund in Washington, the Citigroup buildings in New York and the Prudential building in Newark, New Jersey, had been sent to al-Qaeda officials like “corporate reports going to head office,” Butterfield said.

Ian Macdonald, Barot’s lawyer, argued Tuesday the plans were only “rough and exploratory” and a long way from fruition, making a plea for leniency. He said there was no evidence that funding, approval or an attack date had been finalised.

Barot is wanted in the United States on a four-count indictment and in Yemen on separate terror-related charges.

Under British law, Barot could be temporarily transferred to the United States to stand trial over the charges, including an allegation of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction.

Officials in the US said previously they would consider extraditing Barot once his British charges had been expedited. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan could not immediately say if they now intended to proceed with the request. Investigators uncovered the conspiracy when they found key details on computers owned by Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, an alleged al-Qaeda computer expert arrested in Lahore, Pakistan in July 2004, prosecutors said. Additional clues were found in the garages and homes of Barot’s seven alleged accomplices.

A videotape shot while Barot was visiting New York in March 2001 — just months before the September 11 attacks — was among evidence uncovered in the haul. The shaky footage — shown on screens in the courthouse — zoomed in on the World Trade Center’s towers as a man is heard mimicking the sound of an explosion. It was found spliced into a videotape copy of the movie “Die Hard With A Vengeance.”

“It is memorable for its macabre prophecy,” Lawson said. Barot is not believed to have had prior knowledge of the September 11 terror attacks.

Discovery of the US plots led President George W. Bush to raise the US terrorism threat level. The Associated Press, The British Broadcasting Corp., and Times Newspapers Ltd. successfully challenged a court ruling that threatened to prevent news media reporting details of Barot’s sentencing hearing.

Butterfield had ruled that publishing details of the case could prejudice trials of Barot’s seven co-defendants, scheduled to take place in London next year.