Suspect in New York Subway Bombing Is Charged With Terrorism

NEW YORK — Prosecutors filed federal terrorism charges Tuesday against a would-be suicide bomber who was accused of detonating a pipe bomb affixed to his torso inside a Manhattan subway corridor.

The five charges against the bombing suspect, Akayed Ullah, 27, an immigrant from Bangladesh who had lived for several years in Brooklyn, include use of weapons of mass destruction, provision of material support to the Islamic State group and bombing a place of public use, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan.

The complaint says that Ullah, who has been held at Bellevue Hospital Center, admitted to investigators that he had built the pipe bomb and carried out the attack.

“I did it for the Islamic State,” he said, according to the complaint.

It says he also told his interrogators that one of his goals in carrying out the attack “was to terrorize as many people as possible.”

Ullah, while at the hospital, waived his Miranda rights verbally and in writing, the complaint says.

It said Ullah began to be radicalized by at least 2014 and that he viewed Islamic State propaganda online, including a video directing followers to carry out attacks where they were living if they could not join the group’s efforts overseas. Using the internet, Ullah began researching how to build explosives about a year ago, the complaint said. Within the past two to three weeks, it said, he began gathering the materials to construct the bomb: a metal pipe, which he filled with explosive material he created; screws to pack inside; and Christmas tree lights and a 9-volt battery to spark its detonation. Then, about one week ago, he built the pipe bomb at his apartment in Brooklyn.

Investigators also fanned out overseas, with Bangladeshi police officers visiting Ullah’s ancestral village at Musapur Union in eastern Bangladesh on Tuesday afternoon, speaking with several of his relatives.

“They stayed here for an hour and wanted to know more about Akayed Ullah,” said a cousin named Emdad. “We shared what we know. But police did not find any criminal record against him.”

Counterterrorism investigators also brought Ullah’s wife in for questioning Tuesday and questioned her parents, with whom she was living in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where Ullah was born.