Ahmad Umar Agha, a Syrian Electronic Army hacker known online as "Th3Pr0," has been sentenced by a U.S. federal court to 42 months in prison for his role in a hacking conspiracy that targeted Western news outlets.

The conspiracy was organized and led by members of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's inner circle, including the commander of Syria's General Intelligence Directorate, the U.S. Justice Department said on October 29.

The pro-Assad Syrian Electronic Army began its attacks in 2011. Its members sent phishing emails to steal employees' passwords, then used those passwords to deface websites, redirect web traffic, and hijack social media accounts, according to a 2014 FBI affidavit.

On April 23, 2013, the group hijacked the Associated Press's Twitter account and posted a false report that President Barack Obama had been injured in two explosions at the White House.

Twitter's message confirming a password reset for that account was sent to a Gmail account used primarily by Agha, the affidavit says.

The Justice Department said Agha carried out that hack, which caused a temporary $136 billion drop in the value of stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Agha later told Business Insider that a big drop in the Dow "was our goal of that hack attack" and that "it was a big victory for us."

Agha was first charged in June 2014 in a complaint that remained secret until March 2016. That month, the FBI added him and co-defendant Firas Dardar to its Cyber's Most Wanted list with a $100,000 reward.

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