‘HE FELT GOOD ABOUT WHAT HE HAD DONE’
Suspect charged with terrorism
Sayfullo Saipov — who was brought into a federal court yesterday shackled to a wheelchair to face terrorism charges — has been gleefully bragging in his hospital bed about the deadly Manhattan bike path attack and asked that the Islamic State’s black banner be draped in his room, investigators say.
Saipov told his interrogators “he felt good about what he had done” in Tuesday’s attack, prosecutors claimed in court papers.
The 29-yearold Uzbek national wanted to extend his deadly rampage to the Brooklyn Bridge to “kill as many people as he could,” investigators said.
The purportedly brazen and shameless terrorism suspect was charged yesterday with providing material support to a terrorist group and executing violence and destruction with a motor vehicle. His lawyers did not request bail. The Trump administration as well as U.S. Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham said Saipov should be treated as an enemy combatant, interrogated without Miranda rights and sent to Guantanamo Bay, but it was unclear whether that is likely to happen. Prosecutors indicated he will be tried in civilian court and had already waived his Miranda rights. Officials said the New Jersey resident and former Uber driver had more than 90 Islamic State images and videos on his cellphone — videos that Saipov told investigators inspired him to carry out the attack, according to court documents. Saipov “chose October 31, Halloween, for the attack because he believed there would be more civilians on the street for the holiday,” investigators said.
The complaint against Saipov stated he planned to continue his rampage to the Brooklyn Bridge, that he “wanted to kill as many people as he could” and he “wanted to display ISIS flags in the front and back
of the Truck during the attack but decided against it because he did not want to draw attention to himself.”
The FBI released a wanted poster last night seeking the public’s help in finding Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, 32, also an Uzbek immigrant. The FBI later said the man had been found, but provided no further details on why he was wanted.
Federal authorities and New York police officials concluded that Saipov was inspired by ISIS to kill innocent people with the truck.
“He did this in the name of ISIS,” said NYPD terrorism chief John Miller. “He appears to have followed almost exactly to a ‘T’ the instructions that ISIS has put out in its social media channels before with instructions to their followers on how to carry out such an attack.”
Knives and notes purporting to pledge allegiance to ISIS were found in the truck that Saipov used to plow through a crowd Tuesday afternoon on a bike path near the World Trade Center, killing eight people and injuring 12.
Saipov had not been a subject of a federal investigation, though officials said he was linked to people who were. In 2015, Saipov was interviewed by federal agents because he was listed as a contact for two men who came to the U.S. from threat countries on tourism visas then vanished, according to ABC News.
Victims of the attack included five Argentines celebrating a 30-year reunion, hosted by classmate Martin Marro, 48, of Newton, who was seriously injured in the attack. Belgian tourist Ann-Laure Decadt, 31, was a mother of two young sons. New Jersey resident Darren Drake, 32, a project manager for Moody’s Investors Service at the World Trade Center, was out for a bike ride between meetings. Nicholas Cleves, 23, a software engineer who lives in the West Village, was the only New Yorker killed in the attack. Cleves reportedly has relatives in the Boston area.
President Trump’s reaction to the terror attack was to attack the ’90s-era visa lottery program that Saipov used to enter the U.S. in 2010. Trump, who got into a war of words with New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, has blamed him for supporting the Diversity Visa Lottery program that Saipov used to get into the U.S. and called on Congress to eliminate it, saying, “We have to get much tougher, much smarter and less politically correct.”
Trump called for “quick justice” and “strong justice” in the wake of the attack and derided the U.S. justice system’s ability to hold criminals accountable, “Because what we have right now is a joke and it’s a laughingstock. And no wonder so much of this stuff takes place.”