A Canadian who pleaded guilty to planning attacks on U.S. embassies in Singapore and the Philippines is expected to receive a life sentence Friday in New York.

Mohamed Mansour Jabarah moved to Canada from Kuwait when he was 12. He later attended al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, according to court documents.

Mohamed Mansour Jabarah, 26, is scheduled to appear in a Manhattan courtroom, his first public appearance since he was arrested in Oman in 2002. Thursday marked the first time details of the case were made public.

The Iraqi-born man confessed in 2002 to acting as an intermediary between al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah, a group linked to bombings in South Asia, as part of a secret proceeding in the U.S.

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.

Court papers said that before his confession, Jabarah worked as a U.S. government informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, providing "a considerable amount of valuable intelligence." At that time, he lived in a housing facility provided by the FBI.

Authorities transferred him to a federal detention centre after finding evidence that he planned 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. He was transferred again in 2006.

Brought to U.S. from Canada

Jabarah, who moved to St. Catharines, Ont., from Kuwait when he was 12, had been brought to the U.S. from Canada following his capture in Jordan in 2002.

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, the Security Intelligence Review Committee heard in October.

The committee concluded CSIS "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.

A spokesperson with the Foreign Affairs Department in 2004 said Jabarah was involved in an ongoing judicial process, but that Canada was not aware of any secret trial.

Court papers said Jabarah went to Afghanistan after graduating high school. There, he attended al-Qaeda training camps and met Osama bin Laden and other top terrorist figures.

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