A US judge has jailed a suspected al-Qaeda member for stabbing a prison guard in the eye with a sharpened comb.
US District Court Judge Deborah Batts imposed a term from 17-1/2 years to 22 years and 10 months on Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, saying the government had failed to show the stabbing was part of a broader "terrorism" scheme. Prosecutors had sought a life sentence for the offence.
Salim, who prosecutors say is a high-ranking member of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, entered a guilty plea in the near-fatal stabbing of the guard in April 2002.
Prosecutors had argued that Salim's attack, in which the weapon penetrated the officer's brain, was part of a broad plan to take hostages in the facility's high-security area and free other suspected al-Qaeda prisoners.
The prison in lower Manhattan is beside the federal courthouse where Salim was awaiting trial on charges that he participated in the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in east Africa. Those charges are still pending.