The supporter of the Islamic State (IS) group Akayed Ullah, who in December 2017 tried unsuccessfully to perpetrate a terrorist attack in the New York subway, has been sentenced this Thursday to life imprisonment in a federal court in Manhattan.
Ullah, 29, originally from Bangladesh, was convicted of all charges in November 2018 after a trial that lasted for a week.
The condemned set off an explosive device at a subway station located under the Port Authority bus terminal, in downtown Manhattan on December 11, 2017.
“He intended to murder as many innocent Americans as possible. Ullah’s motive was clear and unequivocal: a deep-seated ideological hatred of the United States,” Manhattan prosecutor Audrey Strauss said, quoted in a statement.
“Ironically, Ullah’s actions only reaffirmed America’s greatness. by showing the fairness and impartiality that our justice system represents, “he added.
The bomb, which the man had attached to his body, failed and only slightly injured four people, as well as more serious damage to the terrorist himself.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, Ullah manufactured a tube explosive and detonated it “at a busy communications hub in downtown New York,” with the intention of “causing harm and terrorizing as many people as possible.”
The perpetrator of the failed attack, who lived in the Brooklyn neighborhood, claimed during his trial that he was not a terrorist, but was simply outraged by the US intervention in the Middle East.
“This is not an attack at all. It is a public suicide attempt,” Ullah’s lawyer Amy Gallicchio alleged at the time.
The boss of the NYPD, Dermot Shea, insisted today that Ullah “accepted the IS call to attack and kill New Yorkers” and recalled that the author carried out an investigation prior to the failed attack.
The Prosecutor’s Office assures that the individual began to radicalize in 2014 after feeling “angry” by the United States policy towards the Middle East and began to search the internet for material that promoted the Islamic terrorist ideology.
“In particular, Ullah received inspiration from IS propaganda, including a video in which IS instructed its followers to carry out attacks in their own countries if they could not travel abroad to join IS,” the statement said in the statement. It is detailed that he began to investigate how to make a bomb a year before the attack.
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