From CNN, NBC News and the New York Post
A senior law enforcement officer told CNN a note, written in English, was found in the truck that said the attack, which unfolded around 3 p.m. on Halloween, was done in the name of ISIS.
A spokesman for Home Depot confirmed one of the company’s rental trucks was part of an incident in lower Manhattan and said the company is “cooperating with authorities” in the investigation.
Sayfullo Saipov, who was shot by police, is out of surgery, a law enforcement source told CNN. Officers were able to talk to him before the surgery, the source said. It is not known if he told them anything. Saipov was born in the central Asian nation of Uzbekistan and came to the US in 2010, two law enforcement sources told CNN. He was married on March 25, 2013 to another Uzbek, Nozima Odilova, when he was 25 and she was 19 in Cuyhoga Falls, Ohio.
For the past six months, he was an Uber driver. The company said he passed a background but has now been removed from the app. Saipov had multiple interactions with law enforcement in several states, online records show. Authorities are sure to look at whether the suspect visited Uzbekistan since he moved to the United States seven years ago, CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank said. “There has been a significant problem with jihadism in Uzbekistan,” According to Cruickshank there are two large jihadi groups in the country. One of them is the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which is affiliated with ISIS.
Six people were declared dead at the scene and two were pronounced dead at the hospital. At least 11 others were transported to the hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries, according to New York Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro. Five of those killed were Argentinians, Hernán Mendoza, Diego Angelini, Alejandro Pagnucco, Ariel Erlij and Hernán Ferruchi, a group of friends celebrating the 30th anniversary of graduates of the Polytechnic School in their hometown, the country’s Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement. A Belgian national also was a victim of the attack, according to Didier Reynders, Belgium’s deputy prime minister.
“My initial reaction was, obviously, concern and shock over what happened,” Umer Ahmad, a 43-year-old Muslim-American physician from New Jersey told NBC News. “And then, basically, I was wondering if it was a Muslim who did it. My biggest concern is that he’s readily identified as a Muslim and then that is extrapolated out to my own faith,” he said …he worried about backlash every time an attack like Tuesday’s happens. But “I feel I’m more worried about what the response from political leadership would be,”
In the wake of Tuesday’s attack, some Muslim Americans and community leaders expressed concerns over how their religion would be perceived and whether Muslims would become targets of violence. Afaf Nasher, executive director of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the action and attitude that Muslim Americans must take were ones of continued service — “service to what needs to be done for, number one, those that are attacked, but also just in general for the general community.”
ISIS supporters have been praising the deadly truck rampage in downtown Manhattan following reports that the driver was a suspected terrorist who shouted “Allahu Akbar” just moments after getting out of his vehicle.
Pro-Islamic State channels have posted commemorative posters online — which feature photographs that were taken at the scene and edited images of the Statue of Liberty being blown up.
Rukmini Callimachi, a correspondent for The New York Times that has covered the terror group since 2014, has been sharing the disturbing propaganda on her Twitter page in the wake of Tuesday’s incident. She has also tweeted out texts that were reportedly sent through the Telegram messenger service between some of the sympathizers, in which they joke about the low death toll.
“Sounds like one of our brothers,” said one person named Abdullah Sami.
“Trick-or-treat New York City. Alhamdulillah Happy Hauntings,” they added, posting laughing emojis, as well.
“If it was my truck it would have been on a much bigger Street,” replied another user, identified as Abdullah Sami.
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One Response
It would be good for once if there WERE a ‘backlash’. that is: if the NYPD were , right now, to surprise-raid-and-search every damn mosque in New York City, beginning with whatever mosque this man and anybody in his social circle hung out at it. The louder the protestations and denials the more intensive the search should be. With sniffer dogs, big black ones, and army sappers. And if anything, anything at all suspect is found during the searches, then every mosque where anything sus, any hint of illegal activities – el.g. traces of explosives, unregistered weapons, stashes of weapons, peculiar chemicals, biologicals, counterfeit cash, suspeciously-large stashes of real cash, stashes of real or faked IDs, etc and so forth – then those mosques should be shut down instantly, all associated persons given a very thorough grilling, and… the mosque razed to the ground and the property resumed by the City or by the State. Indeed, since eight New Yorkers or guests of New York have been murdered, it would make sense to … shut down, and raze to the ground, eight of the biggest mosques in NYC, and deport their imams to Islamic country of origin. They howl about backlash; give them something to howl about. But .. do it by exposing, publicly, all over the place, the dodgy dealings that are going on in those organised-crime-syndicate / military-base/ forts/ arsenals/ magazines/ bomb factories that the Ummah builds wherever it goes.; and by shutting said forts/ arsenals/ explosive-and-bomb factories down.