HollyMatkinManhattan, NY – The pressure-cooker bomber who injured 30 people in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood in 2016 has been trying to radicalize fellow inmates at the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), prosecutors said on Friday.
In a letter to U.S. District Judge Richard Berman, Acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim said that Ahmad Rahimi “distributed extremist material” to inmates who he befriended during jail prayer sessions, NBC News reported.
Rahimi disseminated instructions for building bombs, speeches by Osama bin Laden and the late militant cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, as well as the al Qaeda magazine “Inspire,” among other materials, WPIX reported.
Rahimi “has been attempting to radicalize fellow inmates in the Metropolitan Correction Center by, among other things, distributing propaganda and publications issued by terrorist organizations,” the letter read.
Investigators said that the extremist material was part of Rahimi’s pre-trial discovery, which he stored on his laptop, NBC News reported.
“The defendant allowed the inmates to view these materials on his laptop, and also provided some of them with electronic copies,” prosecutors said, according to NBC News.
At least two other inmates were found to have the jihadist information on their own electronic devices.
One of those men was Sajmir Alimehmeti, an alleged ISIS sympathizer whose trial for terrorism-related charges begins next month, WPIX reported.
“After learning of the defendant’s radicalization efforts, the MCC staff searched his personal property and located, among other things, an address book containing the names and inmate numbers of other defendants charged with terrorism offenses,” prosecutors wrote.
Among the names included in the address book were Muhanad Mahmoud Al-Farekh, who was convicted of an Army base attack in Afghanistan, and alleged al-Shabaab recruit Maalik Alim Jones, NBC News reported.
Rahimi wrote his own letter to the judge on Dec. 12, and announced that he had been on a hunger strike since Dec. 8 because he had not been allowed to have visits from his wife and children since he was moved to the higher-security Special Housing Unit in October.
“I am extremely frustrated and physically tired and mentally drained of the continuous runaround they are giving me,” Rahimi complained.
Blue Lives Matter has been unable to locate anybody who cares.
On Oct. 16, Rahimi was convicted on eight federal charges in relation to the Sep. 17, 2016 Chelsea neighborhood bombing, as well as for a second bomb that did not detonate, WPIX reported.
Rahimi still faces separate charges in connection with a bomb that exploded in Seaside Park, New Jersey, near a beginning of a Marine Corps charity run, as well as for a backpack found at a New Jersey transit station that contained explosive devices.
He has also been charged in relation to a gunfight with police that occurred during his arrest.
Rahimi is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 18 for the Chelsea bombing, and faces a maximum of life in prison.