NEW YORK,  (Reuters) – An accused former top aide to  Osama bin Laden was sentenced yesterday to life in prison for  stabbing a guard through the eye with a sharpened comb while  awaiting trial for conspiring with al Qaeda to kill Americans.

Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, 52, pleaded guilty in 2002 to  attempted murder and conspiracy to murder a federal official.

Salim was sentenced in 2004 to 32 years in prison, but the  case was sent back to U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts for  resentencing after an appeals court ruled the judge had failed  to take terrorism-related factors into account.

U.S. prosecutors say Salim, who trained as an engineer in  Iraq, was a founder of al Qaeda who issued religious decrees  for bin Laden and operated training camps and safe houses in  Pakistan and Afghanistan.   The assault on the official, Louis Pepe, occurred in 2000  when Salim and four others were being held in the Metropolitan  Correctional Center in Manhattan while awaiting trial for  planning attacks on Americans including the August 1998  bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.