NEW YORK — Ahmad Khan Rahimi, an Afghan-born immigrant who worked quietly behind the counter of his family’s fast-food restaurant before building and planting the bomb that exploded in Manhattan in 2016, was sentenced on Tuesday to two life terms in prison.

Judge Richard M. Berman handed down the sentence in US District Court in Manhattan, ending the prosecution of Rahimi, who was convicted of the act of jihad-inspired terrorism that was widely considered a near miss, injuring dozens without killing anyone. Rahimi was convicted by a jury in October of setting off weapons of mass destruction.

Rahimi, 30, planned an attack that was simple and potentially lethal. On Sept. 17, 2016, Rahimi traveled to Manhattan from his home in Elizabeth, New Jersey, pulling suitcases on rollers with each hand. He went on to place a homemade bomb — packed into a pressure cooker and wired to a flip-phone detonator — on a stretch of the Chelsea neighborhood’s West 23rd Street, busy with pedestrians on a warm Saturday night. The blast from that device sent glass and shrapnel flying and launched a construction waste container across the street. More than 30 people were injured, and they testified at Rahimi’s trial.

He placed a second bomb on West 27th Street, but a passerby on edge from the blast four blocks away noticed it and called police, and the bomb squad took the device away without incident. Earlier that day, he had placed a bomb in a garbage can at the finish line of a US Marine Corps charity race in Seaside Park, N.J. The race’s start time had been delayed, however, and no one was hurt when the bomb exploded.

He had planned more attacks. The day after the Chelsea explosion, Rahimi returned to New Jersey and left a backpack containing six pipe bombs in an Elizabeth, N.J., train station. One exploded after it was detonated by a police robot, but the bombs caused no injuries.

New York Times