LOS ANGELES (CN) – A 34-year-old man already serving a 25-year federal prison sentence for trying to send bomb-making materials to terrorists pleaded guilty Tuesday in the attempted murder of a prison warden in 2016.
Fazliddin Kurbanov pleaded guilty to one count of attempted murder of a federal officer. Kurbanov seriously injured the warden with a knife he fashioned himself at the federal correctional facility in Victorville, California.
Warden Calvin Johnson survived the attack and is now serving at another facility with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, according to the Justice Department.
In 2016, a federal judge sentenced Kurbanov to 25 years in prison after he was convicted of providing material support to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and planning to build and plant bombs at military bases in Texas and in Idaho. Prosecutors showed that between 2012 and 2013, the Uzbek national communicated with members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan over Skype, where he expressed interest in building a bomb and targeting military bases.
He asked for instructions on how to make a bomb he could detonate remotely, and investigators found a hollow hand grenade, a hobby fuse, ammunition containing smokeless powder, tannerite, aluminum powder, potassium nitrate, charcoal, yellow sulfur powder and fertilizer in his Boise apartment.
Tuesday’s guilty plea could add an additional 15 years to Kurbanov’s sentence, which will be handed down June 4 by U.S. District Judge Virginia A. Phillips.
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