A 48-year-old man was sentenced to 19 years, four months behind bars Monday for possession of bomb-making materials found in his car during a traffic stop in Brea.
Saleh Ali, who acted as his own attorney, received the maximum sentence, after telling the judge “You’re a cockroach.”
Ali was convicted March 4 of two counts each of use of a destructive device with the intent to injure, sale and transportation of a destructive device and possession of a destructive device on a public highway, along with one count of intent to unlawfully make a destructive device.
Ali was arrested Sept. 18, 2018, after a Brea police officer pulled him over about 9 p.m. for having an expired registration tag on his vehicle.
“During the traffic stop, the officer keyed in on a couple of suspicious items in the car he believed to be an explosive device,” Brea police Lt. Adam Hawley said then. “He detained the driver out of an abundance of caution, locked down a little bit of the area and called out sheriff’s bomb squad deputies.”
The bomb squad destroyed the suspected explosive devices at the scene, Hawley said.
Police also alerted the Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center, a coalition of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, Hawley said.
Ali has two prior convictions in June 2003 in Passaic County, New Jersey, for aggravated assault with serious bodily injury and making terrorist threats, according to court records.