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 Minh Quang Pham, 33, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to
three counts including that he provided material support to al Qaeda
in the Arabian Peninsula, three weeks before he was set to face
trial.
Speaking in a quiet voice, Pham admitted to providing support to the
Islamic militant group, including through helping prepare the
group's online propaganda magazine, Inspire, and receiving
military-type training.
Prosecutors have said that Pham, who had attended a university in
South London, while in Yemen also directly trained with Anwar
al-Awlaki, an American-born radical Islamic cleric who was killed in
a 2011 U.S. drone attack.
In court, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean Buckley said after his
arrest, Pham admitted that al-Awlaki instructed him in how to make
an explosive device out of household material.
 Buckley said al-Awlaki "directed Pham to return to the United
Kingdom, where he was to construct and detonate the device at the
arrival area of Heathrow." Buckley added that al-Awlaki gave Pham
$10,000 for the plot.
Bobbi Sternheim, Pham's lawyer, said her client accepted "full
responsibility" to the charges to which he pled. But she said there
was "no proof" Pham did anything to follow through with causing any
harm at Heathrow.
Pham faces a mandatory minimum of 30 years in prison and a maximum
term of life. He is scheduled to be sentenced April 14.
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Prosecutors said Pham traveled from the United Kingdom to Yemen in
December 2010 and took an oath of allegiance to the militant group,
which the United States lists as a terrorist organization.
He spent a year in Yemen, where he received "military-type" training
and helped prepare the group's magazine, Inspire, working directly
with Samir Khan, a U.S. citizen who served as its editor and died in
a U.S. drone strike in 2011.
Pham returned to the United Kingdom in July 2011, where he was
detained by authorities at Heathrow Airport, who discovered various
items including a live round of .762 caliber armor-piercing
ammunition.
He was subsequently arrested in the United Kingdom in June 2012 at
the request of U.S. authorities and extradited to the United States
in February 2015.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Bernard Orr)
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