Suspect in NYC van attack that killed 8 wanted to hang ISIS flag in hospital room, court hears

The man who killed eight people on a New York City bike path in 2017 smiled as he spoke proudly of the massacre, asking to hang the flag of an Islamic militant group in his hospital room, prosecutors said Monday in his first federal death penalty trial. since US President Joe Biden took office.

Prosecutors said that Sayfullo Saipov drove a rented pickup truck onto a concrete road along the Hudson River and accelerated to 106 km/h, running over cyclists and pedestrians and leaving a trail of dead and injured people on October 31, 2017.

The rampage ended when a truck crashed into a school bus a few blocks from the World Trade Center, a collision that left one child with serious brain damage. Saipov was then shot by a police officer, who said the suspect got out of the accident and pointed black pellets and a paintball gun that looked like a deadly weapon at him.

After being shot by officers, Saipov was arrested at the scene.

Saipov, now 34, has pleaded not guilty to terrorism charges.

Terrible scenes are described

In recent years, attackers with Islamic militant sympathies have been shot and killed after launching deadly attacks on U.S. soil at Orlando, Fla., nightclubs, Pensacola, Fla., a Navy base, Chattanooga, Tenn., a military recruiting center, and at various locations in San Bernardino, California.

Saipov also expected to die that day as a martyr, defense attorney David Patton said in his opening statement, to avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world.

Saipov spoke during a pretrial hearing in 2019, saying “thousands of Muslims are dying all over the world,” and asked why he should be tried for eight deaths.

Meanwhile, Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Li described the horrific scene that Saipov left behind, including the death of one person and serious permanent injuries to about a dozen others, and the jammed bicycles that littered the popular street.

“The riders, human, are unconscious or dead. The survivors are walking, injured and confused, looking for their families and friends. Screams fill the air,” said Li. The dead included a mother who came from Belgium with her family, five friends from Argentina and two Americans.

Li said Saipov hoped to kill more people by driving onto the Brooklyn Bridge, “where he could hurt more people.”

The FBI agent who Saipov asked to display the ISIS flag in his hospital room will testify, Li said.

“He was eager to talk to the FBI. He was proud of his attack,” prosecutors said, noting that the agent would testify that Saipov smiled as he recounted his destruction. “He told me his goal was to kill as many people as possible.”

Saipov could face the death penalty

In his opening statement Monday, Li said jurors will hear testimony about Saipov’s desire to curry favor with the Islamic State group after he legally immigrated to the U.S. from Uzbekistan in 2010. He lived in Ohio and Florida before joining his family in Paterson, N.J.

Prosecutors said Saipov’s cell phone contained evidence he viewed and stored thousands of Islamic State propaganda images, including phones using cars and trucks as weapons in terror attacks in the US. before 12 months.

Patton agreed in an open statement that Saipov had immersed himself in the audio and video material of terrorists and social media, saying Saipov believed that his actions on October 31, 2017, was a religious obligation.

“And as we sit here, they still believe it,” Patton said.

“It was not an accident. He did it on purpose,” he said at another point.

Det. Ryan Nash, who later became a New York police officer, testified Monday that he was responding to another call when he also chased Saipov on foot.

Nash’s shooting sent shockwaves through the courtroom Monday as a video was shown to jurors that captured the moment Saipov was wounded.

Attorney General Merrick Garland allowed U.S. prosecutors to continue advocating the death penalty in cases inherited from the previous administration, even as Biden imposed a moratorium on executions for federal crimes after taking office.

Judge Vernon S. Broderick told the jury that Saipov’s conviction will lead to a separate sentencing phase where they will be asked to decide whether he should spend life in prison or be executed. If they do not choose death, their sentence will be life imprisonment.

Saipov’s lawyer said the death penalty proceedings could not be overturned by former president Donald Trump when he tweeted in all caps a day after the attack that Saipov “SHOULD RECEIVE THE DEATH PENALTY!”