According to the testimony of the Brooklyn man responsible for the failed attack on Times Square subway earlier this week, he was inspired by posters that have been appearing around the heart of New York.
We reported recently on the appearance of posters in and around New York City that appear to encourage terrorists to strike certain parts of the city during the holiday season. The posters have been spotted in numerous locations in the US, England, Europe, Canada and Australia and they appear to contain code language and permit participants to write encoded messages in order to communicate who is seeing the posters and how they intend to respond to the messages they see. Arrests have been made in conjunction with the posters but not as many as one would hope for.
Akayed Ullah, a 27-year-old man, wore a device which detonated just after 7 am on Monday, Dec. 11th. Ullah sustained serious burns from the detonation and a small number of others had minor injuries from the event. The device had failed to detonate fully. Only the detonator actually exploded, leaving the bulk of the explosive undetonated.
Ullah later told investigators that he was inspired by ISIS, and that he selected the location for the attack by following the information detailed in the Christmas attack posters which have been appearing around the city.
The would-be terrorist came to the United States from Bangladesh on a family immigrant visa in 2011, according to a spokesperson for the Dept. of Homeland Security. He lives in Brooklyn on Ocean Parkway with his sister and mother, police officials told reporters shortly after the incident. He was working as a driver, even though he was trained as an electrician.
He told police that he was a devotee of the ISIS terrorist organization, but police claim to believe that he acted alone. The official claim on his having acted alone, however, is not satisfactory. Even if Ullah did assemble his bomb and plan his attack without any help or collaboration, he still used the information related by the posters to select his target. This is to say that there is a network of terrorist communications that Ullah relied upon in order to select his target.
The conclusion that he acted alone either indicates law enforcement is not sharing everything they know in order to avoid tipping off other terrorists, or they are being directed to ignore evidence that would lead to more arrests.
The fact that Ullah’s bomb was very poorly made does suggest that he was alone and unaided in his attention to the technical and tactical aspects of the attack. But, the fact that he was directed by a system of communication set up by others indicates that there are far more terrorist activities and supporters within the limits of New York City than have been accounted for.
Ullah sustained serious lacerations from his failed attack. He was transported to the Bellevue Medical Center in Manhattan where he is being treated for burns to his hands, and abdomen as well as the lacerations. The three people who received minor injuries from the failed attack were taken to other hospitals in the area. They were treated for headaches and ringing ears before being released.
This was the second attack in New York within just a six-month period. The previous attack involved a man who drove a rented truck along a crowded bike path on the night of Halloween.
In a typically milk toast response, Mayor Bill de Blasio said, “The choice of New York is always for a reason because we’re a beacon to the world and we actually show that we as a society of many faiths and many backgrounds can work and democracy can work.”
After President Trump was notified about the attack, a press conference was held. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee-Sanders told reporters, “If [the President’s] policy had been in place, then the attacker would not have been able to come into the country.”
Cities like New York will always be the most difficult targets to defend- and the most attractive targets for terrorists. The size, population, and complexity of the infrastructure create many opportunities for terrorists to kill indiscriminately.
For the time being, we are gladdened by recent reports from Russia which claim that ISIS is all but defeated in Syria and that this subway attack was a humiliating and unforced failure for extremist Islamic terrorism.
~ Conservative Zone
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Prashant