New York, Jan 14 : A 66-year-old Muslim man in the United States has been sentenced to life in prison for plotting to blow up aviation fuel pipelines at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport.

Kareem Ibrahim, a Shiite imam from Trinidad, was convicted last year of conspiring with three other Muslim extremists to attack the airport.

Assistant US Attorney Marshall Miller told a Brooklyn federal judge that if the plot had not been thwarted by the FBI, the group might have launched "a potentially devastating terrorist attack" and "would have caused catastrophic harm - both personal, in terms of lives, and economic damage."

"The group's stated goal was to take out all of Queens. This was a dangerous situation," The New York Post quoted Miller, as saying.

According to the report, Ibrahim declined to speak before he was sentenced, but at his trial last year he testified that he had been skeptical the so-called plot would materialize and really "didn''t think it would go through."

Two others plotters arrested with Ibrahim in 2007 were convicted at an earlier trial and a third plead guilty to charges stemming from the scheme.

Last year, a jury convicted Ibrahim of all five counts leveled against him, including charges of conspiracy to attack international airport facilities, aircraft, and destroy transit facilities. (ANI)