[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit [official website] Wednesday affirmed the conviction [JURIST report] of a Pakistani man tried for conspiring to bomb a New York City subway station. On appeal, Shahawar Matin Siraj (Matin) argued that the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure [text] required police to produce reports memorializing oral statements that he made to an undercover police officer. The court rejected [opinion, PDF] Matin's argument, concluding that

[B]y explicitly designating as discoverable only those written memorializations of oral statements made in response to interrogation by a known government agent…Rule 16 implicitly excludes from its scope written memorializations of other oral statements such as those at issue here.

Matin will be deported after he serves his 30-year sentence [JURIST report] in the US.

A federal jury convicted [US DOJ press release] Matin despite his claim that he was entrapped. He said that an undercover officer suggested the bomb plot and incited him with photographs of US prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison [JURIST news archive]. The prosecution presented videotape surveillance [MSNBC report] of Matin in which he stated he would not plant the explosive device. Siraj first drew authorities' attention for expressing anti-American sentiments after 9/11 [JURIST news archive]. No evidence was presented linking him to any terrorist groups or showing that he ever actually gathered explosive materials.