FILE – In this Dec. 20, 2016 file photo, Ahmad Khan Rahimi, the man accused of setting off bombs in New Jersey and New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, sits in court in Elizabeth, N.J. Rahimi, an Islamic terrorist already serving a life prison term for a bombing in New York City, was convicted Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2019, of multiple counts of attempted murder and assault stemming from a shootout with police three years ago in New Jersey. (AP Photo/Mel Evans, File)
N.J. (AP) — An Afghan-born U.S. citizen already serving a life prison term for a bombing in New York City faces sentencing Friday for multiple counts of attempted murder and assault stemming from a shootout with police in New Jersey in 2016.
Ahmad Khan Rahimi is scheduled to appear in state court in Elizabeth.
The shooting occurred in Linden, New Jersey, two days after a bomb had exploded in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood.
In October, a jury convicted Rahimi on all 30 counts, involving attempted murder and multiple aggravated assault counts involving five officers, plus several weapons charges.
Rahimi is a U.S. citizen who was born in Afghanistan but grew up in New Jersey. He was previously convicted in a separate trial of planting two bombs in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood, one of which detonated with enough force to hurl a 100-pound trash bin more than 120 feet, shatter windows and leave metal scraps strewn on the street.
No one was killed, but 30 people suffered injuries, including cuts caused by flying metal and glass. A second bomb planted on the street failed to explode.
The bombing came just hours after a small pipe bomb detonated harmlessly along the route of a Marine Corps charity road race in Seaside Park, New Jersey.
Investigators identified him as a suspect through a mobile phone attached to the Manhattan bomb that didn’t detonate.
As authorities hunted for him, they discovered a backpack containing additional explosives near a New Jersey transit station in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
Rahimi graduated from high school in New Jersey in 2007 and later attended community college, where he majored in criminal justice but didn’t graduate. His family operated a chicken takeout restaurant in Elizabeth not far from the courthouse where he was tried.
At Rahimi’s sentencing in New York, prosecutors criticized him for not showing remorse and for seeking to radicalize fellow prisoners at the federal jail in New York where he had been imprisoned since his arrest.
They maintained he gave inmates copies of terrorist propaganda and jihadist materials, including speeches and lectures by al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born cleric who inspired attacks on America and was killed in a U.S. airstrike in September 2011.
By DAVID PORTER
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