Have a blast in jail!
Chelsea bomber gets ‘double life’
See ya never, loser. An unrepentant, homegrown Islamic terrorist was sentenced Tuesday to two life terms plus another 30 years in prison for setting off a time bomb that injured 31 people in Manhattan.
Ahmad Khan Rahimi, 30, delivered a rambling, 15-minute statement in which he claimed not to “harbor hate towards anyone” before getting put in his place by a victim of his Chelsea attack.
Pauline Nelson, of Brooklyn, who was in her car near the blast, looked Rahimi in the eyes as she scolded him for not apologizing — and for his relaxed attitude during the marathon, three-hour sentencing in Manhattan federal court. “I heard you talk about your kids . . . I am a mother of four. I came here — I can’t tell my kids I’m coming today,” Nelson, a Trinidadian immigrant, lashed into Rahimi.
“What you did, laugh to your lawyer, you show no remorse. I sit in my car and you can take away my life in one minute — God forgive you.”
Nelson, 48, said outside court that she still suffers lower-back pain from the Sept. 17, 2016, blast and is frightened by sirens.
Judge Richard Berman — who repeatedly said it was a miracle that Rahimi didn’t kill anyone — called him a “clear and present danger” before handing down the no-mercy sentence. The terrorist’s face reddened and his eyes filled with tears.
Rahimi — an Afghan immigrant who was radicalized through online postings by al Qaeda and ISIS — had been guaranteed at least one mandatory life sentence since a jury convicted him in October on eight counts, including use of a weapon of mass destruction.
His own dad called him a “terrorist” in an interview with NBC the day before he faced justice.
Surveillance videos played at trial showed pedestrians enjoying a temperate Saturday night before they recoiled in shock and ran for their lives when his pressure-cooker bomb blew up outside a home for the blind and disabled around 8 p.m.
Blind building resident Mary West, who suffered hearing loss in the blast, attended Tuesday’s sentencing with her guide dog, a Labrador retriever named Judy.
During his trial, Rahimi was caught bragging about his notoriety over a jailhouse phone, and he later sent a letter to a crony in Germany claiming that only “Allah will be my judge.”
Prosecutors said Rahimi, who lived in Elizabeth, NJ, even tried radicalizing fellow inmates inside jail.
The Chelsea blast was one of two Rahimi planned for the neighborhood, but another bomb he left inside a piece of luggage on West 27th Street was spotted by an alert citizen after two men took the bag and left the device on the sidewalk.
Cops defused that bomb before it could explode.