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| Ullah the Bangladeshi suicide-bomber. |
But on Monday morning, Mr. Ullah, 27, strapped a pipe bomb to his body and set out to detonate it in a Times Square subway station, the police said, not only causing chaos among crowds of commuters, but also leaving behind a trail of mystery that baffled those who knew him. “He was a good guy,” said Mohammad Yousuf, a cabdriver who prayed with Mr. Ullah at the mosque. “I can’t believe he would do anything like this.”
According to several law enforcement officials, Mr. Ullah said he set off the bomb in retaliation for American airstrikes in Syria and elsewhere, targeting members of the Islamic State, or ISIS. He told investigators that he had been radicalized online and had made a number of trips overseas in the past five years, visiting Bangladesh in recent months, one of the officials said.
The corner of Church and McDonald Avenues in the Kensington section of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is a hub for Bangladeshi immigrants in New York, like Mr. Ullah.
Mr. Ullah admitted that he had looked up online how to build the bomb and had assembled it in his residence in Brooklyn, purchasing all of the materials except the pipe, which he said he found at a job site where he was working as an electrician at 39th Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan, two of the officials said.
Immigration officials said that Mr. Ullah arrived in the United States from Bangladesh in 2011 on a family immigrant visa and has lived in Brooklyn ever since as a legal permanent resident. According to the terms of his visa, Mr. Ullah was the nephew of an American citizen and benefited from what the officials called “extended family chain migration.”
Real estate records show that Mr. Ullah lived in the Flatlands neighborhood in a small, two-story, brick-faced house. He and his family had been there for about seven years, said Alan Butrico, a businessman who owns the house next door. In the last few years, Mr. Butrico said, he had some unpleasant encounters with Mr. Ullah. They largely revolved around parking.
“He used to block the driveway,” Mr. Butrico complained. “His family used to block the driveway all the time.” On Sunday night, Mr. Butrico added, one of his tenants heard the sounds of “big fighting” coming from Mr. Ullah’s house, though it remained uncertain what the trouble might have been.
On Monday morning, police officials, including some from the bomb squad, descended on the house, surrounding it in yellow crime-scene tape. Officers and federal agents also appeared at another Brooklyn address associated with Mr. Ullah — a six-story beige brick building at 679 Ocean Parkway in Kensington.
According to census statistics compiled by Queens College, Kensington is home to more than 3,000 Bangladeshi-born New Yorkers, making it the largest Bangladeshi enclave in Brooklyn. Mian Quadry, a representative of the Bangladesh Muslim Center in Kensington, said he did not know Mr. Ullah, adding, “This is not what and who we are.”
“The Kensington community we have,” Mr. Quadry said, “it’s people who work very hard just to provide for our family.” The Masjid Nur Al Islam mosque, which Mr. Ullah was said to have attended, sits on the corner of Church and Chester Avenues in Kensington. It was closed on Monday.
One man, who has worshiped at the mosque for 15 years and gave his name only as Mohammad, said Mr. Ullah prayed there regularly, especially during Ramadan. Mr. Ullah, Mohammad said, was close to the mosque’s imam and was often seen with him at afternoon prayers. But Mr. Yousuf, the cabdriver, said he had not seen Mr. Ullah at the mosque in the past five or six months.
From 2012 to 2015, Mr. Ullah held a license issued by the city to drive for-hire vehicles, city officials said. The officials were unable to say if Mr. Ullah had driven a yellow cab or for a private service like Lyft or Uber. It was also unclear, they said, if he had his own car or drove for an employer.
Police officials in Bangladesh said on Monday that they had never heard of Mr. Ullah, and the country’s embassy in Washington issued a statement declaring a “zero tolerance” policy toward terrorism. “A terrorist is a terrorist irrespective of his or her ethnicity or religion,” the statement said, “and must be brought to justice.”
Condemnations of the bombing did little to lessen the confusion in Mr. Ullah’s neighborhood. “Nothing surprises me anymore today,” Mr. Butrico said. “You don’t know who your neighbors are. Can’t trust nobody anymore.”
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| Little Bangladesh at Kensington of Brooklyn in NYC. |
The brother of Port Authority bombing suspect Akayed Ullah worships at the same mosque where infamous blind sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman once preached, law enforcement sources told The Post on Monday.
Ullah’s brother Ahsan attends Mas Jid al-Salam mosque in Jersey City, where the radical cleric Abdel-Rahman used to spew hate. Rahman came to the FBI’s attention following the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.
The blind sheik – considered the WTC attack mastermind – was implicated in plots targeting the UN, Holland and Lincoln Tunnels and then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. He was convicted of conspiracy in federal court in 1995, sentenced to life behind bars and died earlier this year at the age of 78.
Ahsan Ullah is being questioned by police but Akayed insists his brother had no role in the Port Authority attack, sources have said.
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| Blind-sheik's radical mosque in the Jersey City across the Hudson from NYC. |
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| Even in his death Rahman the Blind Sheik is still killing innocent Americans. |
The family of the alleged ISIS-inspired Port Authority bomber said they were “heartbroken” by the attack on Monday and blasted law enforcement agencies for what they claimed were heavy-handed tactics by investigators.
“We are heartbroken by the violence that was targeted at our city today and by the allegations being made against a member of our family,” said the statement read by Albert Fox Cahn, the Legal Director for the NY Chapter Council for Islamic Relations.
“But we’re also outraged by the behavior of the law enforcement officials who held children as small as 4 years old out in the cold and who pulled a teenager out of high school classes to interrogate him without lawyer, without his parents.”
It was not immediately clear if the 4-year-old or the teenager were were related to the suspect. The family continued to criticize the way the investigation was handled — even though the suspect, Akayed Ullah, allegedly launched a failed terror attack in a crowded city subway tunnel.
“These are not the sorts of actions we expect from our justice system,” the statement read. “We have every confidence that our justice system will find the truth behind this attack and that we will in the end be able learn what occurred today.”
(Instead of criticizing the suicide-bomber Muslim Ullah the notorious terrorist-sympathizing Muslims from CAIR has already started their usual Lawfare against the law enforcement for doing their jobs. Like UAE and other Arab countries U.S. should declare Hamas-controlled CAIR a terrorist organization and ban them.)
Ullah The Bomber Targeted Hallway Because of Christmas Posters
The alleged Port Authority bomber spent an hour spilling his guts to investigators at Bellevue Hospital on Monday — saying he picked the specific hallway because of Christmas posters and that he was avenging violence against Muslims around the world, law enforcement sources said.
Akayed Ullah mentioned President Trump and past administrations during the grilling, and said his anger was fueled by decades of anti-Muslim bloodshed in Gaza, Syria and Iraq. Ullah, a Bangladeshi immigrant, said the attack was specifically inspired by ISIS — “not Al-Qaeda” — and also mentioned seeing Christmas posters before detonating the device in the underground tunnel between the bustling bus depot and the Times Square subway.
The seasonal imagery set him off — inspiring him to follow ISIS Christmas threats, NBC reports. ISIS propaganda released just weeks ago features a picture of Santa Claus in Times Square next to explosives and the phrase “We meet at Christmas in New York . . . soon,” according to terror watchdog group Site Intel.
An Islamic State militant also drove a truck into a Berlin Christmas market last year, killing 12 and injuring 56. “He acknowledges he purposely set it off then and there,” a senior law enforcement official said.
He says he acted alone, building his crudely constructed bomb from commercially available parts based on instructions he found online, sources said. Fortunately, the home-made pipe bomb didn’t detonate properly — and only wounded the wanna-be suicide bomber and those around him.
Ullah was allowed to stop several times
to pray during the interview, and was later taken to the Intensive Care Unit
for treatment for internal injuries suffered in the blast, sources said.
Related posts at following links:
Bangladeshi Suicide-Bomber Wounded 5 In NYC Attack
Related posts at following links:
Bangladeshi Suicide-Bomber Wounded 5 In NYC Attack