Accused bike path terrorist Sayfullo Saipov threatened to decapitate a federal corrections officer for repeatedly waking him while he’s locked up at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a new court filing detailing a trove of the government’s evidence against him alleges.
Saipov, who’s accused of killing eight people during his 2017 Halloween terror attack on the West Side Highway, allegedly threatened the officer on Dec. 17 last year for repeatedly slamming a door at night, making it hard for the ISIS follower to sleep, the filing states.
“During the course of this confrontation, the defendant threatened to kill the Officer. Indeed, as the defendant later admitted to the MCC’s disciplinary committee (the ‘Committee’), he told the Officer that if the Officer dared to open the defendant’s cell, in two minutes ‘other guys will be picking up your dead body,’” the filing states.
The next day, still angry from the prior incident, Saipov obstructed a security camera in his cell and said he wouldn’t remove it until “the Officer’s head was cut off” and then referred to the officer “as an animal,” according to the filing.
“Again, the defendant unapologetically admitted this threat to the Committee, telling the Committee that he wanted to ‘cut this animal head off,’” prosecutors allege.
The government’s motion, filed late Tuesday, describes all of the evidence it plans to introduce in Saipov’s April trial and all of the items it wants the court to exclude.
It plans to call on some of Saipov’s 11 living victims, some who were permanently disfigured following the attack, and will include the never-before-seen note that Saipov allegedly left at the scene.
The note, pictured in the motion, is a crudely drawn image showing three renditions of the ISIS flag as well as three sets of the same Arabic text, which roughly translates to “No God but God and Muhammad is his Prophet” and “Islamic Supplication. It will endure,” a phrase “commonly used to refer to ISIS,” according to prosecutors.
Saipov, an Uzbeki immigrant, faces the death penalty if convicted.
