O.C. Man Gets 13 Years After Admitting He Intended to Assist al-Qaida

Originally posted at 12:03 p.m. June 30, 2014. Edited with new details.

A Garden Grove security guard who admitted that he was planning to fly to Pakistan and provide weapons training to members of al- Qaida was sentenced today to 13 years in federal prison.

Sinh Vinh Ngo Nguyen, 25, pleaded guilty in December to a single count of attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Nguyen was arrested Oct. 11, 2013, at a Santa Ana bus station, from which he was planning to travel to Mexico and then fly to Peshawar, Pakistan, prosecutors said.

According to a plea agreement filed last week in U.S. District Court, Nguyen admitted that he went to Syria in 2012 and joined opposition forces. After returning to the United States, he told associates that he had offered to train al-Qaida forces in Syria, but had been turned down, prosecutors said.

Nguyen then became the target of an FBI sting operation. Between Aug. 3 and Oct. 11 of last year, Nguyen met with an undercover agent posting as an al- Qaida recruiter, authorities said. After several meetings, Nguyen gave the agent a photo of himself and a bogus passport application and agreed to fly to Pakistan to train 30 al-Qaida fighters for five to six weeks, preparing them for "a guerilla warfare ambush attack on coalition forces," according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Nguyen bought the Mexico-to-Pakistan plane ticket on Oct. 1, prosecutors said.

When he was arrested at the bus station, Nguyen had the phony passport with him along with a computer hard driving containing more than 180 weapons- training videos, prosecutors said.

--City News Service