NEW YORK -- Federal authorities filed 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.
He said that he had built the pipe bomb at his apartment in Brooklyn about one week before carrying out the attack. He began compiling the materials that he used to construct the bomb about two or three weeks ago, he told investigators.
On Monday morning, the complaint notes, Ullah posted a statement on his Facebook page stating, "Trump you failed to protect your nation."
Investigators are continuing to delve into the past of Ullah, who is believed to have acted alone and chosen the spot in a narrow hallway connecting subway stations beneath Times Square for its Christmas-themed posters.
His device failed to fully detonate, police said, and Ullah was the only one seriously injured in a blast that sent smoke billowing through the underground passageways of Midtown and snarled a Monday morning commute.
"It didn't function with the force and power that the recipe intended to," John J. Miller, the New York Police Department's commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, said in an interview Tuesday on "CBS This Morning."
For that reason, Miller said, the events could have "been far, far worse."
The charges were to be announced at a news conference later today by Joon H. Kim, acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan; William F. Sweeney, head of the FBI's New York office, and Miller.
NW News on 12/13/2017