The ringleader of an al-Qaida-inspired plot to detonate knapsack bombs in England was sentenced Friday to at least 18 years in jail.

Judge Richard Henriques said 31-year-old Irfan Naseer was "the leader, driving force and man in charge" of the elaborate plot, sentencing him to life with no possibility of parole for 18 years.

"Your plot had the blessing of al-Qaida and you intended to further the aims of al-Qaida," Henriques told Naseer in London as he sentenced the man nicknamed Big Irfan, or Chubbs, along with nine accomplices. "Clearly nothing was going to stop you, short of intervention of the authorities."

Prosecutors had said the men, fired up by the sermons of U.S.-born al-Qaida preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, hoped to cause carnage on a mass scale. One of Naseer's accomplices was recorded calling the planned attack "another 9/11."

Police said the terrorist conspiracy was the most significant uncovered in Britain since a plot to blow up airliners in midair was foiled in 2006.

But the plot was undone by problems with money and logistics. No targets had been chosen and no bombs built when Naseer, Ashik Ali and Irfan Khalid, both now 28, were arrested in September 2011 in Birmingham, central England, after a huge operation by police and the security service.

Prosecutors said Naseer and Khalid had traveled to Pakistan for terror training, where they learned details of poisons, bomb-making and weaponry, and made "martyrdom videos" justifying their planned attacks.

On their return to England in July 2011, they began to recruit others to the plot and to raise money by posing as street collectors for Muslim charities. They also began experimenting with chemicals, the prosecution said, aided by Naseer's university degree in pharmacy.

But many of the group's plans soon went awry. Four other young men dispatched by the plotters to Pakistan for terrorist training were sent home within days when the family of one man found out. The four have pleaded guilty to terrorism-related offenses.

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