Terror charges against Times Square ‘bomber’ – Fix lax immigration: Trump

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NEW YORK, Dec 12, (Agencies): US prosecutors on Tuesday brought federal charges against a Bangladeshi man, accusing him of using a weapon of mass destruction in Monday’s bombing of a Manhattan commuter hub. Akayed Ullah, 27, was charged in a criminal complaint filed in Manhattan federal court with providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, bombing a public place, destruction of property by means of explosive and use of a destructive device.

U l l a h told police interviewers after the blast that “I did it for the I s l a m i c State,” according to court papers filed by federal prosecutors. Ullah began the process of self-radicalization in 2014 when he began viewing pro-Islamic State materials online and carried out his attack because he was angry over US policies in the Middle East, prosecutors said.

New York officials on Tuesday also charged Ullah with terrorism, accusing him of setting off a pipe bomb, as investigators in his home country questioned his wife. Ullah was charged with criminal possession of a weapon, supporting an act of terrorism, and making a terroristic threat under New York state law, the New York Police Department said. The federal charges, which are expected to take precedence over the state charges, carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. On the morning of the attack, Ullah posted on his Facebook page, “Trump you failed to protect your nation.” Ullah’s passport, which was recovered from his home, had handwritten notes, including one that read, “O AMERICA, DIE IN YOUR RAGE.” Investigators at the scene found a nine-volt battery inside Ullah’s pants pocket, as well as fragments from a metal pipe and the remnants of what appeared to be a Christmas tree light bulb attached to wires. Ullah told investigators he built the bomb at his Brooklyn home one week before the attack, filling the pipe with metal screws to maximize damage. He chose a work day to target as many people as possible.

Ullah began viewing Islamic State propaganda online as early as 2014, including a video instructing supporters to carry out attacks in their homelands if they were unable to travel overseas. He started to research how to build an explosive a year ago. Investigators in Bangladesh were questioning Ullah’s wife, according to two officials who declined to be identified as they were not permitted to discuss the matter publicly. They did not provide details on the questioning, but said the couple have a six-month-old baby boy.

Found
“We have found his wife and in-laws in Dhaka. We are interviewing them,” one of the police officials told Reuters. New York police say Ullah set off a pipe bomb in an underground corridor of the subway system that connects Times Square to the Port Authority Bus Terminal at rush hour on Monday morning, injuring himself and three others. Ullah survived with burns and lacerations and was taken to hospital in police custody. The three bystanders sustained minor injuries.

The NYPD and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were conducting the investigation in conjunction with other agencies through the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and were asking the public for any information about the suspect. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said Monday that a bomb attack by a 27-year-old from Bangladesh on New York’s subway system underscored the “urgent need” for Congress to enact immigration reform. “First and foremost, as I have been saying since I first announced my candidacy for president, America must fix its lax immigration system, which allows far too many dangerous, inadequately vetted people to access our country,” Trump said in a statement. He added that the suspect, identified as Akayed Ullah, had entered the country through “extended- family chain migration,” a system the president is seeking to end that allows families to sponsor relatives to come to the United States.

He also cited his controversial travel ban on the entry of nationals from eight countries — six of which have Muslim majorities — as “one step forward in securing our immigration system.” Other measures Trump said he hoped Congress would pass included “increasing the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, enhancing the arrest and detention authorities for immigration officers, and ending fraud and abuse in our immigration system.”

Death
Trump also reiterated his call for terror convicts to receive “the strongest penalty allowed by law, including the death penalty.” He had previously called for the death penalty for Sayfullo Saipov, an immigrant from Uzbekistan who killed eight people and injured 12 in an October 31 truck attack in New York. In related story, Bangladesh police scrambled Tuesday for details about alleged New York subway bomber Akayed Ullah, but uncovered few early leads that might shed light on what might have driven him to try and kill commuters with a homemade bomb.

Ullah told police investigators he wanted to avenge US airstrikes on the Islamic State group and was also inspired by Christmas terror plots in Europe, US media reported. Bangladesh police are investigating whether Ullah was radicalised in his Muslim-majority homeland, where foreigners have been among those targeted in deadly assaults claimed by the IS group and al-Qaeda. “So far, his name is not on our wide-range list of radicalised persons or members of terror groups, both from Bangladesh and outside,” senior counter terrorism police officer Sanwar Hossain told AFP. “We are trying to gather more details,” he said. US authorities say Ullah migrated seven years ago as the member of a family already living there under what is known as “chain immigration”.

But a police spokeswoman in Bangladesh said preliminary investigations suggested the family left “17 or 18 years ago”. Bangladesh authorities are unclear exactly when Ullah left, but speculated he could have been shuttling back and forth between the two countries. “Maybe he was 10 or 11 years old (when the family left for the US),” police spokeswoman Sahely Ferdous told AFP, adding Ullah’s “development of thinking” likely took place there.

Bangladesh police said Ullah’s family hailed from Sandwip, an island off the coast of the southern port city of Chittagong but his father had left for the capital Dhaka some 30 years ago. A friend of the family told AFP that Ullah married two years ago, but did not take his wife to the US. “His wife lives in Hazaribagh neighbourhood in Dhaka, where the family lived for the last three decades, and where his father ran a grocery shop.

They were married in 2015,” Sazzad Hossain Mukul, a friend of Ullah’s mother, told AFP. He said Ullah visited Bangladesh in September, and spent a month with his wife. Police confirmed the date of his last visit, but could not say whether Ullah was married. “We are questioning one of his relatives for more information,” Chittagong police chief Noore- Alam Mina told AFP. Ullah was born in Dhaka and spent at least his early years in the capital, Mina added.

The impoverished riverine nation of 160 million has been waging a war against homegrown extremism in the wake of numerous attacks by radical groups in recent years. In July last year militants stormed a Dhaka cafe and massacred 22 hostages, including 18 foreigners, in an assault claimed by the IS. Security forces have shot dead more than 70 alleged militants in a fierce crackdown since the cafe carnage. Bangladesh last month arrested an alleged militant from Ansarullah Bangla Team, a homegrown extremist group with links to al-Qaeda, over the 2015 murder of a prominent Bangladesh- origin American blogger in Dhaka.

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