NEW YORK: A US restaurant worker inspired by Osama bin Laden was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday for wounding 31 people in a 2016 New York bombing, branded “extremely dangerous” by a federal judge.
Afghan-born Ahmad Khan Rahimi, 30, told the court that he was radicalized after being “harassed” by the FBI and “singled out” for his religion, but showed no remorse for inflicting the bloody injuries. Prosecutors told his two-week trial last year it was a “miracle” that nobody was killed in the September 17, 2016 attack. A second bomb forced the cancellation of a US Marine Corps run in New Jersey. He was convicted on all eight counts. Police also defused another device in Chelsea and found additional pipe bombs in Rahimi’s hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he worked in his family’s fried chicken restaurant. Rahimi was critically wounded in a shootout with police on September 19 before being captured, and was found with a handwritten journal lauding Osama bin Laden and US-born Al-Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki.