The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld the life prison sentence of Akayed Ullah for a planned 2017 suicide bombing attempt under Times Square, while reversing one of the convictions tied to terrorism law and Islamic State control.
In its decision, the court said Ullah was appropriately sentenced to life in 2021 for the bombing plot that largely failed, explaining that an explosive attached to Ullah’s chest “barely exploded.” The panel left intact other charges that it said supported the life term, according to the ruling described by the Associated Press.
The appeals court reversed Ullah’s conviction for providing material support to the Islamic State group, focusing on the requirements of that charge. The Manhattan-based 2nd Circuit said the separate material-support count required that Ullah work under the terror group’s control, even though he carried out the attack alone.
In the panel’s reasoning, the court said Ullah cannot be “directed by the group ‘if he is acting alone, and if ISIS does not know he exists, has no expectation he will hear ISIS’s messages or act on them, and will not know, or care, or have any recourse if he ignores the message completely.’” The panel also said that Ullah “conceived of himself as a soldier of ISIS does not establish that ISIS did, in fact, control or direct his actions.”
The court’s language reflected its characterization of Ullah’s involvement as independent rather than directed. As the AP account notes, two judges on the three-judge panel concluded he acted “entirely independently” of the Islamic State group.
Judge Steven J. Menashi dissented from the majority’s approach to the material-support conviction. Menashi said that the jury’s conviction was unsurprising in light of evidence that included Ullah’s statement to investigators that he “did it on behalf of the Islamic State,” according to the AP description of the dissent.
Menashi argued that reaching a contrary conclusion required rewriting the material-support statute and ignoring the evidence presented to the jury. He wrote, “That is wrong,” adding that doing so “rewrites the material-support statute and ignores the evidence presented to the jury.”
Ullah’s lawyer and a spokesperson for prosecutors both declined to comment, the AP reported. At his April 2021 sentencing, Ullah requested leniency and apologized, telling the court, “Your honor, what I did on Dec. 11, it was wrong,” and “I can tell you from the bottom of my heart, I’m deeply sorry. … I do not support harming innocent people.”
Judge Richard J. Sullivan, who now sits on the 2nd Circuit, told Ullah at sentencing that a life term was appropriate. The AP account quotes Sullivan as saying, “It was a truly barbaric and heinous crime,” at the time.
The appeals ruling followed an examination of the underlying facts of the attack. The AP account said the blast occurred in a pedestrian tunnel beneath Times Square and the Port Authority bus terminal, leaving Ullah seriously burned and sparing some nearby pedestrians from more serious injuries, while prosecutors said one bystander lost 70% of his hearing.
The AP also noted that after the attack, President Donald Trump derided the immigration system that had allowed Ullah to enter the U.S. It added that the 2nd Circuit ruling came about six weeks after two teenagers were criminally charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization by bringing explosives to a “Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City” event outside the Manhattan residence of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, where the homemade devices did not explode.