May bring new heat on uzbeks

RADICALIZED AFTER COMING TO U.S.

THE ISIS-LOVING terrorist who killed eight people in a lower Manhattan truck attack has brought attention to his homeland of Uzbekistan — and made it a possible target of President Trump’s travel ban.

The isolated Central Asian country has mostly been known to the outside world for its brutal regime and oppression of religious Muslims.

But in the past year, several of its nationals have been involved in high-profile terrorist attacks, including 29-yearold Sayfullo Saipov, who mowed down cyclists and pedestrians on a bike path along the Hudson River on Tuesday.

Before the Manhattan massacre, an Uzbek national was part of an ISIS-inspired attack on an Istanbul nightclub that killed 39 people on Dec. 31.

An Uzbek man killed 14 people with a bomb on April 3 on the Metro in St. Petersburg, Russia. A few days later, an Uzbek man who had been denied asylum in Sweden killed four people with a truck attack in Stock- holm.

An Uzbek man also pleaded guilty last month to federal terrorism charges in Brooklyn.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday that President Trump was considering adding Uzbekistan — a country of 32 million people — to the list of states restricted in his travel ban.

Experts say that Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic south of Kazakhstan and north of Afghanistan, has the potential to be a breeding ground for Islamist terrorists because of its high-poverty rate and few economic opportunities. Dictator Islam Karimov ruled the country through the end of Soviet rule in 1991 until his death last year, a tenure that featured him imprisoning opponents including his own daughter and banning Muslim groups that could threaten his hold on power.

Young people such as Saipov, who received a green card after coming to the U.S. in 2010, have fled the country in droves, both due to repression and a lack of economic opportunity.