A Kuwaiti-born Canadian man who pleaded guilty to planning attacks on U.S. and Israeli embassies in Singapore and the Philippines received a life sentence Friday in New York.

Mohamed Mansour Jabarah will serve a life sentence for his role in planning attacks against U.S. embassies.

A federal judge sentenced Mohamed Mansour Jabarah, 26, after he gave a 20-minute speech in which he repudiated violence, saying he had been "brainwashed" and asking to be allowed to return to his family.

"I am not a ruthless, infamous and notorious terrorist," said Jabarah, who moved to St. Catharines, Ont., from Kuwait when he was 12.

"I do not believe in terrorism, violence and killing."

It was his first public appearance since he was arrested in Oman in 2002. 

Jabarah agreed in 2002 to a secret plea bargain with U.S. officials, confessing to his role as an intermediary between al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah, a group linked to bombings in South Asia.

Court documents said Jabarah was accused of receiving $50,000 US to bomb embassies in Manila and Singapore. Several co-conspirators were arrested in 2001 and the attacks were never carried out.

Documents alleged Jabarah attended al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, where he met al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Jabarah was specially trained by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York.

Jabarah worked as a U.S. government informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation following his confession, providing "a considerable amount of valuable intelligence." At that time, he lived in a housing facility provided by the FBI replete with a stereo and his own kitchen.

Jabarah was later transferred to a federal detention centre after authorities found evidence they said showed he intended to kill some of the agents he was working with. For the next four years, Jabarah was kept in solitary confinement under 24-hour video watch.

Officials tried to re-enlist him as an informant again in 2006, but Jabarah was not co-operative, which might have cost him his freedom.

The judge said Friday she would have found Jabarah's appeals more compelling if he agreed to continue providing information to the U.S. government.

"Arbitrarily detained"

Jabarah had been brought to the U.S. from Canada following his capture in Oman six years ago.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service had gone to the Mideast country to escort Jabarah to the U.S. via Canada, where he could not be charged with a crime under domestic law.

Jabarah was questioned for four days by Canadian authorities, who told him he would be sent to the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo if he did not agree to collaborate with investigators. They then allowed him to call home.

His father, Mansour Jabarah, told CBC News on Friday: "He phoned me with a very nice voice, 'Hi Dad, how are you? I'm close to you, I'm going to see you soon.'"

His son was not seen publicly again after that, taken by Canadian authorities to the U.S. where he agreed to become a government informant.

The Security Intelligence Review Committee last October concluded Canada's spy agency had "arbitrarily detained" Jabarah in violation of the accused man's constitutional rights, including his rights to silence, to legal counsel and to remain in Canada.

Jabarah's father has said his son was "tricked" by Canadian agents who said they were taking him to a place near the Canada-U.S. border around Niagara Falls, but would bring him home.

He said his son deserved a public trial and should not have been handed over to American authorities.

Saudi Arabian security forces killed Jabarah's brother Abdoul Rahman Jabarah, 23, in 2003 after a bombing at a housing compound in Riyadh that killed 34 people.

With files from the Canadian and Associated Press