‘Shocked & scared & sad’ to learn her hubby behind worst attack since 9/11 Wife found to be in the dark NYPD big: No overseas link
THE WIFE OF THE Uzbek terrorist charged with crushing eight people under the wheels of a rented truck was reportedly stunned to learn that her husband carried out the deadly lower Manhattan attack.
A person who spoke by phone to Nozima Odilova, 24, in the hours after the Tuesday terror strike said she seemed “shocked and horrified and scared and sad,” according to The Washington Post.
At the time, federal agents were already at the couple’s New Jersey home, urging Odilova to cooperate in the investigation, the newspaper reported.
Odilova decided to speak freely with investigators and denied having prior knowledge of her husband’s sinister plot, sources told the Daily News.
Saipov has made his love of ISIS known since his arrest and late Thursday, the terror group finally acknowledged his carnage saying, “the attacker is one of the caliphate soldiers”.
Meanwhile, ABC News reported that just before Odilova’s husband, Sayfullo Saipov, mowed down his victims, he called a friend.
The FBI released a poster of the friend, Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, on Wednesday, saying its investigators were trying to find him. An hour later, Assistant Director in Charge Bill Sweeney said the FBI was no longer looking for Kadirov. ABC said the call’s significance wasunknown.
Odilova married Saipov, 29, a fellow Uzbekistan national, in Ohio in March 2013.
He arrived to the U.S. from his hometown of Tashkent in 2010.
John Miller, the NYPD’s counterterrorism chief, said a preliminary investigation suggests that Saipov was radicalized after he came to the U.S.
In an interview with “CBS This Morning,” Miller said the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the FBI were scouring Saipov’s communications in search of answers to a series of lingering questions.
“Was he actually communicating with ISIS officials over encrypted channels or was this directed? Was this part of a plan?” Miller said.
“At this point we don’t see anything that leads us to believe there’s anyone else involved, but I caution we’re a day or two into this,” he added.
Officials wouldn’t confirm reports that Saipov was interviewed by federal agents during a 2015 probe of terror suspects who overstayed their tourist visas. He was listed as a “point of contact” for two men whose names appeared on a Homeland Security Department counterterrorism database, ABC News reported.
Saipov and his wife moved to Paterson, N.J., after stints in Ohio and Florida. The couple has three young children.
Neighbors said they rarely saw Odilova. They described Saipov as a quiet family man who largely kept to himself.
Court papers filed Wednesday told a different story.
Saipov developed an obsession with the Islamic State terror group that was already in full bloom by the time he moved to Paterson a few months ago, according to a criminal complaint.
The struggling Uber and Lyft driver planning the attack a year ago and even rented a flatbed truck from a Home Depot in Passaic, N.J., on Oct. 22 for a test run.
Authorities say he methodically followed instructions laid out in an ISIS publication on how to weaponize a truck.
Saipov put his plans into menacing motion on Tuesday when he steered his truck onto a bike path along the Hudson River at 3:05 p.m. and mowed down the cyclists and pedestrians in front of him, authorities said.
The terror attack was the worst in the city since 9/11.
In addition to the eight fatalities, 13 people were injured. Of the dead, one was from New Jersey and one was from Manhattan. Five Argentine men were killed. A Belgian mom was the only woman to die in the attack.
After the rented truck crashed into a school bus near Chambers St., Saipov hopped out waving a pellet gun and paintball gun. “Allahu akbar!” he screamed. Saipov’s milelong trail of terror ended when NYPD Officer Ryan Nash, 28, fired a bullet into his abdomen.
In his hospital bed, Saipov was so pleased with the attack he told federal agents that he wanted to hang an ISIS flag in his room. Authorities searched a pair of the suspect’s cell phones and found near- ly 90 ISIS-related videos. The videos showed beheadings and ISIS fighters killing a prisoner by running him over with a tank — among other terrorist propaganda.
Saipov told the investigators that he chose Halloween because he thought there would be more people in the street. He conceded that he planned to run over civilians all the way to and across the Brooklyn Bridge, officials said.
The suspect was arraigned in Manhattan Federal Court late Wednesday on charges of providing material support to a terrorist group, as well as violence and destruction of motor vehicles. The charges could lead to the death penalty.
Reached Wednesday at her building in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, Saipov’s mother-inlaw, Nodira Agzomova, struggled to find words to describe how she was feeling.
“I’m in shock,” she said. “Can’t believe it.”