On January 9, the trial of Uzbek Sayfullo Saipov accused of being the author of the terrorist attack on January 31, 2017 in which 8 people were murdered will begin in the Southern District Court of New York. Among the victims were five Argentines from the city of Rosario, who had traveled to New York to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Polytechnic College graduates: Hernán Mendoza, Diego Angelini, Alejandro Pagnucco, Ariel Erlij and Hernán Ferruchi.
Infobae spoke with John Felix Marteauexpert in the prevention of money laundering and financing of terrorism and lawyer for anna evansthe widow of Hernan Mendoza.
– Dr. Marteau, how were the events the day of the attack?
– On October 31, 2017, on Halloween, this Uzbek immigrant named Saipov rented a truck at Home Depot in New Jersey. From there he crossed the George Washington Bridge that connects to Manhattan and went to the area known as Lower Manhattan near the Memorial of the September 11 attacks. On that avenue that runs next to the Hudson River, there is a park, a bike lane. In this context were friends from the Polytechnic School who had traveled from Rosario, where Hernán Mendoza was, and his closest friends from that important period in his life. Saipov decided to enter the cycle lane area with the truck and ran over them, killing 5 of them and also killing three other people of Belgian and American origin. That happened in the afternoon, he rented the car around two in the afternoon, and 45 minutes later he was producing this attack. The van continued, Saipov intended – as he later stated – to kill as many people as he could and ended up crashing into a school bus. That involved stopping the vehicle. The driver got out with two toy pistols, started walking around the area and was subdued by a New York City police officer who shot him in the stomach. That allowed him to be arrested and today he must face an important trial where the death penalty is requested by the federal prosecutor’s office. It is a tremendously relevant fact in terms of what a terrorist attack in the form proposed by ISIS means. And also because it is a case where Argentine citizens are involved in one of the most serious episodes that we know of in relation to what happened in Argentina with the AMIA attack.
-What are the charges against Saipov?
– In addition to the charges of homicides and intentional injuries, they are charged with the commission of the crime of material support to a designated terrorist organization. This is interesting because Argentine legislation does not recognize this criminal type. The legislators of the United States decided to incriminate as a crime anyone who offers any type of support or material resource to a terrorist organization that has been previously designated by the United States government. In this case, the one who offers himself as an element of support for ISIS is himself with his body, with his will. It should be noted that this ISIS terrorist organization had previously been designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the Secretary of State within a legislative framework that has been operating in the United States for many years, which is the list of terrorists for their incrimination or for the Freeze your assets.
– According to what is known up to now, Saipov became radicalized right there, in the United States, how was this process?
Saipov was about 29 years old when the events occurred. He had obtained the Green Card in 2010 with a system that works with a multi-ethnic distribution of immigration quotas. He was benefited by this lottery system for the granting of settlement visas. It seemed that he was not part of any radicalized group, he came from a family that did not seem to have too many privations and he came to the United States with the dream of being able to integrate into society, to work. He started working as a truck driver, he also married an Uzbek immigrant, he had a family with her. But the frustrations must have set in I guess, I don’t know the details, I hope the trial can reveal a little more about these details, they are important to understand how a terrorist’s head operates. According to the account of some witnesses they said that he was not someone apparently violent. However, the closeness that he apparently had with groups that already had a more extremist orientation led him to a rapid radicalization in the years prior to the attack. Between 2015 and 2016 this rapid, extreme radicalization process took place that led him to the attack. He somehow he fulfilled the objectives of the radicalization program that he had set up in a very ingenious way ISIS.
– How is this program?
– ISIS was a terrorist organization that innovated significantly in the use of communication. The use of the Internet and social networks as an essential link for its objective of producing terror in Western society. In the fight against the “crusaders and heretics”, in the language of ISIS, what all the faithful of Islam should do is cause damage wherever they are. Therefore, ISIS understood that communication, the virtual world, allowed soldiers of the organization to be converted to those who were not structurally part of it, or who did not even have any ties or had gone through a system of physical training as was the case traditionally. He invented a series of communication mechanisms that are videos, essentially, magazines that can quickly circulate on social media and reach a whole audience that is geared towards taking these videos and understanding the message of global Jihad that this Sunni extremist group was proposing. .
In this particular case, it is interesting to see how ISIS had programmed the use of what are called low-intensity terrorist attack tactics, but which produce tremendous damage to the society in which they occur. That involved telling them how to use a knife, which knife to get, how to use it, when to take it out in front of a target, so that it is very explained in this way, with videos and with magazine. The same thing happens with the making of homemade bombs, you see instructors assembling the bomb in a kitchen telling them “you don’t even need to go to a special place.”
It was also time for the tutorials for the case of the use of trucks or vans. This was what Saipov did. The raids on his home in the city of Patterson revealed that he had adopted this modus operandi of receiving radicalization for violent extremism.
– Are you satisfied with the FBI investigation?
– I am satisfied in the sense that I saw that the FBI officials and those responsible for the federal prosecutor’s office for the southern district of New York acted with professionalism, they are very good professionals, they know the matter and I can say that they were committed to the case. I am a lawyer and lawyers the only interest we defend is that of our clients. In this case, my only interest is that the rights of Ana Evans and her three children are duly covered and satisfied in the course of these trials. In that sense, speaking as a lawyer, I would like to know and I hope to know in the trial before a popular jury what happened in the city of Patterson. It is a problematic city, with problematic immigration. It is a place of reception for a lot of moderate Islamic immigration but there is a history that it is a problematic place with a very significant homicide rate in the United States, it is a violent place and there are other problematic immigration groups. In other words, Patterson is a place that must be examined in the sense of understanding what it meant to the attacker. Why, prior to the attack, did he go to live in this city and what happened in that place? If in that place, as I believe, as my experience and what I understand about this matter allows me to think, this virtual radicalization program always needs to end with physical contact, with a physical containment environment that finally allows tactical guidance on the attack and also emotional containment, particularly with regard to what is going to happen to the family. Therefore, famous lone wolf theories are famous lone wolf theories are theories that may be applicable to some specific cases but not to all. I don’t think they are wolves or that they are loners.
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