Sabah Mannan
US President Donald Trump called for the Uzbek national, Sayfullo Saipov to be sentenced to death after Tuesday’s deadly New York City truck attack which was said to be inspired by violent Isis videos, according to prosecutors.
Shortly after the terrorism charge was announced at a press conference, Saipov was taken to the New York federal courthouse in a wheelchair, handcuffed and with his feet shackled on Wednesday. Citing unnamed sources, CBS News reported that Saipov had talked to investigators from his hospital bed and told them that he would have continued his attack and injured more people if he had not crashed.
Officials confirmed that 29-year-old Saipov had entered the US in 2010 through the diversity visa program, also known as the green card lottery, which grants 50,000 visas each year to people for receiving a United States Permanent Resident Card. Donald Trump attacked Democrats over this program, saying it needed to be eliminated “as soon as possible” and the US needed “to get much tougher” regarding this. New York police department alleged that Saipov had been planning the attack for a number of weeks.
A neighbor of the terrorist from Paterson, New Jersey revealed that the suspect had the truck parked for weeks across the street before the attack, but never saw him load or unload anything from it. Saipov worked as an Uber driver and had lived in Ohio, Florida and most recently New Jersey. Sources reveal that Saipov married a 19-year-old Uzbek woman, Nozima Odilova in 2013 and the couple has children.
Source: The Guardian and IB Times