NEW YORK – A man who killed eight people on a New York City bike path five years ago left behind a “scene of destruction and horror” in which “screams filled the air” before telling an agent of the ‘FBI who was proud of the destruction he had caused and wished his terrorist group’s flag could be in his hospital room, a prosecutor said at the start of the trial.
Assistant US Attorney Alexander Li began his opening statement in federal court in Manhattan by recreating the terrorist attack Sayfullo Saipov carried out on a sunny Halloween day in 2017 with a van he rented and whizzed by at 106 km/h.
While the defendant occasionally played with an electronic device at the defense table, the prosecutor briefly turned to point a finger in his direction, saying that the masked Saipov was responsible for the deaths of the eight individuals and the permanent injuries of the defendant . .
Subsequently, Saipov’s defense attorney David Patton did not deny that his client killed eight people and seriously injured others.
“It wasn’t an accident. He did it intentionally,” Patton said. “At the end of the day, there is no point in such a senseless act.”
However, the lawyer said prosecutors were wrong to say Saipov did it to curry favor with a terrorist group and said jurors should pay close attention to the evidence to see he was right.
Patton said Saipov hoped to die a martyr that day to avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world.
Li described the scene where wrecked bicycles were strewn along a working-class street as “staggering, injured and dazed” survivors searching for their families and friends. The victims included family visiting Belgium and 10 friends from Argentina.
He said Saipov hoped to kill more people by driving to the Brooklyn Bridge, “where he could have shot down more people.”
Saipov, 34, who pleaded not guilty, was charged with the attack after he crashed his truck into a school bus, leaving one boy with severe brain damage, Li said. He got out of the truck with a pellet gun and a paintball gun and shouted a phrase in Arabic: “Allahu akbar!”, which means “God is great!”
Li said Saipov intended the chant to be “celebratory”. He was shot by a police officer and arrested at the scene along the West Side Highway.
Li said the police officer will be among the witnesses recounting that day’s events, along with an FBI agent whom Saipov allegedly asked to display an “ISIS” flag in his hospital room.
“He was proud of his attack. He told an FBI agent that his goal was to kill as many people as possible,” the prosecutor said, adding that the agent will testify that Saipov smiled as he recounted his destruction of him.
The trial comes after a six-month jury selection process aimed at weeding out people who cannot be impartial.
Judge Vernon S. Broderick told them that if Saipov is convicted, there will be a separate “punishment phase” of the trial in which jurors will be asked to decide whether Saipov should serve a life sentence or be executed. Unless they unanimously choose death, the sentence would be life in prison, Broderick said.
Saipov’s lawyers said the death penalty process was irrevocably tainted by former President Donald Trump when he tweeted in all caps the day after the attack that Saipov “SHOULD GET THE DEATH PENALTY!”
In 2001, just weeks before the 9/11 attacks, a Manhattan federal court jury refused to impose the death penalty on two men convicted of the deadly bombings of two US embassies in Africa.
In 2019, Saipov spoke at a preliminary hearing that “thousands and thousands of Muslims are dying around the world” and questioned why he should stand trial for eight deaths.
In his opening statement, Li said jurors will hear testimony about Saipov’s desire to curry favor with the Islamic State group after he legally moved to the United States from Uzbekistan in 2010. He lived in Ohio and Florida before meeting the his family in Paterson, New Jersey. .
The prosecutor said Saipov’s cellphones contained evidence that he had viewed and stored thousands of Islamic State propaganda images, including calls to use cars and trucks as weapons in terrorist attacks in the United States.
