(AP) - A New York City man, after reciting verses from the Quran rather than expressing remorse, was sentenced Friday to life in prison in a foiled 2009 plot that authorities labeled one of the closest calls since the 9/11 attacks.

Adis Medunjanin, a 28-year-old U.S. citizen from Bosnia, had faced a mandatory life term following his conviction last year of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and several other terrorism charges stemming from the al-Qaida-sanctioned scheme hatched with two former high school classmates. Appearing in federal court in Brooklyn, Medunjanin read from the Quran in Arabic for several minutes before U.S. District Judge John Gleeson interrupted and asked him if he intended to say anything in English. The defendant politely asked for more time to finish one verse, then shifted into a critique of American society and foreign policy. "What kind of system endorses torture?" he said, as some of his relatives wept in the gallery. "Is this really the best system that humanity ever produced?" He closed by saying, "I had nothing to do with any subway plot or bombing plot whatsoever. I ask Allah to release me from prison."

Gleeson told Medunjanin that his remarks made him appear more like a robotic "exhibit" of extremism than the college-educated person who escaped war-torn Bosnia as a child and grew up in a stable immigrant family in a working-class section of Queens. "You create the impression that you're asking me to sentence you like the committed, anti-American jihadist you seem to want to be for the rest of your life," the judge said. Medunjanin showed no emotion as the sentence was announced. His parents and sister declined to speak to reporters as they left the courthouse.