Global Courant 2023-05-17 16:35:28
Relatives of eight people killed in a Halloween terror attack on a New York City bike path, as well as those injured, are expected to speak Wednesday at a sentencing hearing of an Islamic extremist who prosecutors say deserves multiple life sentences .
Sayfullo Saipov’s conviction in Manhattan federal court comes after a jury in March rejected the death penalty for the Uzbek citizen and a former New Jersey resident, handing him a mandatory life sentence.
Prosecutors urged Judge Vernon S. Broderick to hand down eight consecutive life sentences — one for each death — and an additional 260 years in prison, according to a filed statement.
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“Saipov is an unashamed terrorist – a proud murderer who deserves no clemency and must be punished to the fullest extent of the law,” the prosecutors wrote.
“After months of planning a vicious terrorist attack, Saipov got what he wanted: brutal slaughter of innocent people, lives and families destroyed, and terror in New York City. In fact, the only thing Saipov was denied was more death and destruction because he crashed into a school bus before reaching the Brooklyn Bridge,” they added.
Police work near a damaged Home Depot truck on Nov. 1, 2017, after a motorist drove into a bike lane the day before on Oct. 31, 2017, hitting and killing several people in New York. Prosecutors are seeking multiple life sentences for the man who committed the terror act. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File)
Saipov, 35, committed his attack on Halloween in 2017 when he drove his rented truck onto a Lower Manhattan bike path popular with residents and tourists.
Five tourists from Argentina, two Americans and a Belgian woman were killed and 18 others were seriously injured.
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Saipov was shot by a police officer and immediately taken into custody after he emerged from his truck shouting “God is great” in Arabic and waving paintball and bullets in the air.
Prosecutors said he smiled when he asked FBI agents who interrogated him in a hospital room after the attack if they could hang an Islamic State flag on the walls.
At his trial, his relatives pushed for a life sentence and said they hoped he would realize what he had done and express remorse. They said they wanted him to return to the passive person they remembered him as before he became obsessed with online propaganda from the Islamic State terror group.
Saipov, a former long-haul truck driver, moved to the US legally from Uzbekistan in 2010 and lived in Ohio and Florida before joining his family in Paterson, New Jersey.
His attorney, David Patton, told jurors his actions were “meaningless, heinous and there is no justification for them.”
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Patton, who has not placed a conviction on public record, did not return an email Tuesday.
Saipov, who did not testify at his trial, will have the opportunity to speak at the sentencing hearing.
