After court adjourned, Hassoun appeared to express relief as he smiled and hugged his attorney.
The Beirut-born Hassoun blamed his actions in part on childhood trauma living in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
During civil strife there, Hassoun, then 11, witnessed machete killings from an apartment balcony, he wrote.
As part of a plea deal with the government, Hassoun pleaded guilty last year to two explosives counts.
Undercover agents also repeatedly asked Hassoun if he wanted to back out, telling him there would be no shame in doing so.
Before Thursday's sentencing, Hassoun also apologized in a seven-page letter to Gettleman.
In other video, Hassoun rambles almost incoherently about then-Chicago Mayor Richard M.
"I am sorry for the actions that I made and the shame I brought on you, " Hassoun said, struggling to keep his composure.
The defense suggested investigators may have come close to entrapping Hassoun, arguing the paid informant egged Hassoun on to acquiesce to ever-more ominous-sounding plots.
Minutes before the sentence was announced, Hassoun, a 25-year-old one-time Chicago baker and candy-store worker, apologized for what he'd done in a five-minute statement.
"(The informant) prayed on Sami's fantasies ... and agents helped make that fantasy come true, " another of Hassoun's attorney's, Matthew Madden, told the court Thursday.
Earlier, prosecutor Joel Hammerman held up the ominous-looking but harmless device fashioned from a paint can that Hassoun put in a trash bin near Wrigley Field, placing it in front of the judge.
But so inept was Hassoun, he bought a backpack, walkie-talkies and some batteries agents asked him to buy and the FBI then incorporated it into the dud bomb fashioned at its lab in Quantico, Va.
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