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SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - An Australian man was sentenced Wednesday to 20 years in prison for a plot to attack the country's power grid — an act the judge said was aimed at "instilling terror" in the public.
Faheem Khalid Lodhi, 36, a Pakistan-born architect, was convicted in June on terrorist charges of trying to buy chemicals that could be used to make explosives, possessing a bomb-making manual and obtaining maps of the national power grid.
Lodhi's case was one of the first tried under tough and controversial anti-terror laws passed in Australia in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States. The laws have come under heavy criticism from civil liberties groups, who say the burden of proof for criminal cases is now lower, making guilty verdicts more likely.
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