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NEW YORK — <\/span>A Bangladeshi immigrant is rightly serving a life prison sentence<\/a> for a fizzled 2017 subway bombing attack beneath New York City\u2019s Times Square, a federal appeals panel said Tuesday while reversing his conviction for providing material support to the Islamic State extremist group.<\/p>\n The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Akayed Ullah was appropriately sentenced to life in 2021 for the planned suicide attack that largely failed when an explosive attached to Ullah\u2019s chest barely exploded.<\/p>\n The Manhattan-based 2nd Circuit found that the separate charge of providing material support to the Islamic State group required that Ullah work under the terror group\u2019s control even though he was acting alone. A three-judge panel left intact other charges that support his life term.<\/p>\n The appeals court said Ullah cannot be directed by the group \u201cif he is acting alone, and if ISIS does not know he exists, has no expectation he will hear ISIS\u2019s messages or act on them, and will not know, or care, or have any recourse if he ignores the message completely.\u201d<\/p>\n That Ullah \u201cconceived of himself as a soldier of ISIS does not establish that ISIS did, in fact, control or direct his actions,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n In a dissent, Judge Steven J. Menashi<\/a> said it was unsurprising that Ullah was convicted by a jury of providing material support to the terror group when the evidence they saw included Ullah’s statement to investigators that he \u201cdid it on behalf of the Islamic State.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, though, two of the 2nd Circuit panel’s three judges concluded he acted \u201centirely independently\u201d of the Islamic State group, Menashi noted.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is wrong,\u201d he wrote. \u201cTo reach the opposite conclusion, the majority rewrites the material-support statute and ignores the evidence presented to the jury.\u201d<\/p>\n A lawyer for Ullah and a spokesperson for prosecutors both declined to comment.<\/p>\n At his April 2021 sentencing, Ullah requested leniency.<\/p>\n \u201cYour honor, what I did on Dec. 11, it was wrong,\u201d he said. \u201cI can tell you from the bottom of my heart, I\u2019m deeply sorry. … I do not support harming innocent people.\u201d<\/p>\n Judge Richard J. Sullivan, who now sits on the 2nd Circuit, told him at sentencing that a life sentence was appropriate.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a truly barbaric and heinous crime,\u201d Sullivan said.<\/p>\n The attack in a pedestrian tunnel beneath Times Square and the Port Authority bus terminal left Ullah seriously burned but spared some pedestrians nearby from more serious injuries, though the government noted one bystander lost 70% of his hearing.<\/p>\n Hours after Ullah\u2019s bombing attempt, President Donald Trump derided the immigration system that had allowed Ullah \u2014 and multitudes of law-abiding Bangladeshis \u2014 to enter the U.S.<\/p>\n The 2nd Circuit ruling comes six weeks after two teenagers were criminally charged with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization for allegedly bringing explosives<\/a> to a \u201cStop the Islamic Takeover of New York City\u201d event outside the Manhattan residence of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The homemade devices<\/a> did not explode.<\/p>\n A criminal complaint against the men alleged that they were inspired by the Islamic State group.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n