Suspected NJ Terrorist Asked To Hang ISIS Flag In Hospital: Feds

WAYNE, NJ — The man accused of driving a truck down a bike path on New York City's West Side Tuesday and killing eight people showed no remorse for the killing spree, authorities said.

Sayfullo Saipov, 29, told investigators that "he felt good about what he had done" and asked to have the Islamic State's black flag hung in his Bellevue Hospital room where he is in police custody, federal prosecutors said in a criminal complaint filed against him Wednesday.

Saipov, who lives in Paterson with his wife and young children, was charged with providing material support and resources to a foreign terrorist organization and violently operating a motor vehicle with a "reckless disregard" for human life, the complaint states.

According to the complaint, Saipov decided to carry out the attack after watching ISIS videos — including one of a beheading — on his cell phone. Authorities found about 90 videos from Saipov's phone.

Prosecutors said that Saipov planned the attack more than a year ago and that he decided to use a truck so he could cause "maximum damage against civilians."

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He chose Halloween because more people would be on the street, authorities said. He originally planned to drive the truck onto the Brooklyn Bridge to kill more people after the bike path massacre, the complaint states.

"He did this in the name of ISIS," John Miller, the NYPD's deputy counterterrorism commissioner, told reporters at police headquarters Wednesday morning. Police found handwritten notes in Arabic indicating Saipov's connection to the terrorist group, he said.

Saipov followed, "almost exactly to a T," the Islamic State's published instructions on how to kill as many people as possible with a large truck, Miller said. The terrorist group calls such attacks a "just terror tactic." Similar strikes have killed and injured scores of people in France, Germany and Sweden in the past two years.

According to investigators, Saipov rented a pickup truck from a Home Depot in Passaic, N.J. at 2:06 p.m. He drove it across the George Washington Bridge and exited onto the West Side Highway at 2:43 p.m.

Officials said nothing about the rental seemed suspicious to employees at the store, who are cooperating with investigators.

Saipov lived in Paterson with his wife and young children, authorities said. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told CNN Wednesday that Saipov was "radicalized" in the United States. He is in critical, but stable, condition at Bellevue.

The Paterson mosque Saipov reportedly belonged to has received threatening phone calls in the days since the attack.

Information in a report by staff writer Noah Manskar was used in this report.

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Image: An undated photo provided by St. Charles County Department of Corrections via KMOV shows Sayfullo Saipov. (St. Charles County Department of Corrections/KMOV via AP)