On Monday, 24 year-old Pakistani immigrant Shahawar Matin Siraj was sentenced to 30 years in prison for plotting to bomb the Herald Square subway station in New York City. Attorneys for Siraj said he was set up by a police informant and that the informant was the one who pushed the bombing. Siraj had no explosives, no timetable for an attack and little understanding about explosives. We speak with Siraj's defense attorney, Martin Stolar. [includes rush transcript]

A high-profile case here in New York is raising questions around police tactics and sting operations in pursuing terror cases.

On Monday, a twenty-four year-old Pakistani immigrant was sentenced to 30 years in prison for plotting to bomb the Herald Square subway station. Shahawar Matin Siraj was arrested days before the Republican National Convention in 2004 and held without bail. This past May, he was convicted on four counts of conspiracy, including the most serious, plotting to bomb a public transportation system.

Attorneys for Siraj said he was entrapped by a paid police informant who cajoled and inflamed him to lure him into the conspiracy and that it was the informant who pushed the bombing. Siraj had no explosives, no timetable for an attack and little understanding about explosives. They also criticized the NYPD's tactics of sending informers and the undercover detectives into mosques to cast a wide net in search of radical Islamists.

The police department hailed the 30-year sentence, which is the maximum allowed under federal sentencing guidelines. Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the decision "says that those who conspire against New York will pay a severe price."

Martin Stolar joins us in our firehouse studio -- he is the lead defense attorney for Matin Siraj. We invited the NYPD on the program but they declined our request.

• Martin Stolar, attorney for Shahawar Matin Siraj.