NEW YORK (1010 WINS/AP) – A man who set off a faulty pipe bomb attached to his chest in a tunnel at a Times Square subway station in December 2017 was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday.
Akayed Ullah was sentenced in Manhattan federal court by Judge Richard J. Sullivan.
“A life sentence is appropriate,” Sullivan said. “It was a truly barbaric and heinous crime.”
Ullah, 31, apologized before hearing the sentence.
“Your honor, what I did, it was wrong,” he said. “I can tell you from the bottom of my heart, I’m deeply sorry... I do not support harming innocent people.”
Ullah was convicted in November 2018, a little less than a year after the failed suicide bombing beneath Times Square and the Port Authority bus terminal.
He was arrested after his bomb failed to fully explode, leaving him with serious burns. The blast—caught on surveillance video—spread panic but caused only minor injuries to those near him.
Prosecutors said he committed the attack on behalf of the Islamic State group.
Prosecutors called a life sentence “necessary and appropriate to reflect the abhorrent nature and extreme seriousness of Ullah’s terrorist bombing.”
Lawyers for Ullah had argued that a mandatory 35-year prison term was punishment enough because his attack was an aberration from an otherwise peaceful life.
At trial, prosecutors showed jurors Ullah’s post-arrest statements and social media comments, including when he taunted then-President Donald Trump on Facebook before the attack.
Hours after Ullah’s bombing attempt, Trump derided the immigration system that had allowed Ullah, a Bangladeshi immigrant, to enter the U.S.
Ullah got an entry visa in 2011 because he had an uncle who was already a U.S. citizen. Trump said allowing foreigners to follow relatives to the U.S. was “incompatible with national security.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.