A Bangladeshi immigrant whose pipe bomb misfired in a crowded New York City subway station in 2017 was sentenced to life in prison Thursday.
Akayed Ullah, 31, was sentenced in Manhattan federal court by Judge Richard Sullivan, according to the Department of Justice. Ullah apologized to Sullivan before hearing the sentence.
“Your honor, what I did, it was wrong,” he said. “I can tell you from the bottom of my heart, I’m deeply sorry. … I do not support harming innocent people.”
NYPD IDENTIFIES BOMBING SUSPECT AS AKAYED ULLAH
The attack, which occurred on Dec. 11, 2017, happened at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, and Ullah admitted he intended to murder as many innocent people as possible.
Due to the misfire, the bomb did not detonate properly and partially burned Ullah. One victim suffered a shrapnel wound to his leg, and two other victims partially lost their hearing as a result of the blast.
“Ullah constructed a pipe bomb and detonated it in a mass transit hub in the heart of New York City to harm and terrorize as many people as possible – and he admitted that he did it on behalf of ISIS,” said Assistant Attorney General John Demers.
Ullah began radicalizing in 2014 and was angry at U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, so he sought online reading materials promoting “radical Islamic terrorist ideology,” according to the DOJ.
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His defense lawyer, Amy Gallicchio, said Ullah deserved no more than the mandatory 35 years in prison, arguing that he “lived lawfully and peacefully” before the December 2017 attack that she said was prompted by “personal crisis that left him isolated, depressed, vulnerable, and suicidal.”
