The suspect was charged on Wednesday with providing support to ISIS and violence and destruction of motor vehicles.
“He did this in the name of ISIS, and along with the other items recovered at the scene was some notes that further indicate that,” John Miller, deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism of the NYPD, told the media.
The Uzbek immigrant Sayfullo Saipov, 29, drove a rental truck down a riverfront bike path, an act terrorism, authorities said.
He reportedly lived in Paterson, New Jersey, and had rented the truck earlier from Home Depot. Six victims were pronounced dead at the scene and two more at a nearby hospital, Police Commissioner James O‘Neill confirmed.
Five of the dead were Argentine citizens, visiting New York, the Argentina Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The Belgian government also confirmed the death of one of its citizens.
President Trump said on Wednesday he would immediatley terminate Senator Chuck Schumer’s Diversity Visa Lottery scheme which brought the Manhattan terrorist into America.
Saipov was allowed into the US from Uzbekistan in 2010 through the “Diversity Visa Lottery,” which “aims to diversify the immigrant population in the United States”.
“I am today starting the process of terminating the diversity lottery program. I am going to ask Congress to immediately…get rid of this program,” Trump said.
“Diversity lottery — sounds nice, it’s not nice. It’s not good. It hasn’t been good,” he added. “We want a merit-based system.”
The program epitomizes the efforts by leftist politicians to inflate Democratic voter rolls by inviting migrants to join the welfare queue. Trump said the terrorist may have brought some 23 people in with him, potentially due to the former Obama administration’s expanded migration rules.
The mayor of New York City has received stinging criticism for his ineptitude in preventing such attacks. Instead of combatting jihadist extremism in his own city, Mayor Bill De Blasio rushed off to Hamburg, Germany in June to show solidarity with far-left violent protesters at the G-20 Summit.
And I bet this doesn't include the hundreds of thousands of dollars Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov is costing us in hospital bills. https://t.co/DSoTWipATZ
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) November 1, 2017
Saipov, who had planned the rampage for a year, had also planned on continuing to the Brooklyn Bridge after the West Side highway and “wanted to kill as many people as he could,” according to court papers.
The documents also revealed that Saipov requested to have the ISIS flag flown in his hospital room.
