Prosecutors Describe Driver’s Plan to Kill in Manhattan Terror Attack
The charges, filed just over 24 hours after the deadliest terror attack on New York City since Sept. 11, 2001, placed the case in
the civilian courts even as President Trump denounced the American criminal justice system as “a joke” and “a laughingstock.”
The charges describe the driver, Sayfullo Saipov, 29, as a voracious consumer
and meticulous student of ISIS propaganda, and detail how he said he was spurred to attack by an ISIS video questioning the killing of Muslims in Iraq.
The Rumiyah instructions called for followers to carry secondary weapons so they could continue an attack after crashing the vehicle,
and Mr. Saipov did so, the complaint said: He had a bag of knives in the truck “but was unable to reach them before exiting.” There was also a stun gun on the floor of the truck near the driver’s seat, according to the complaint.
Even so, the federal complaint filed against Mr. Saipov said he hewed closely to
instructions last November in an ISIS magazine, Rumiyah, for a vehicle attack.
In the two months since Mr. Saipov “decided to use a truck in order to inflict maximum
damage against civilians,” the complaint said, he began plotting assiduously.
After plowing his Home Depot rental truck down a bike path along the Hudson River
that teemed with pedestrians and cyclists and crashing into a school bus, the complaint said, he jumped out of the truck, yelled “Allahu akbar” (Arabic for “God is great”) and waved a paintball gun and a pellet gun.
