The Uzbek immigrant accused in the truck rampage that left eight people dead in Manhattan says he was spurred to attack by the Islamic State group's online calls to action and picked Halloween because he figured streets would be extra crowded.
Even as he lay wounded in the hospital from police gunfire, Sayfullo Saipov asked to display the Islamic State group's flag in his room and said "he felt good about what he had done", prosecutors say in court papers.
Saipov, 29, was brought to a New York court in a wheelchair to face terrorism charges that could bring the death penalty.
Handcuffed and with his legs shackled, Saipov nodded his head repeatedly on Wednesday as he was read his rights in a brief court proceeding that he followed through a Russian interpreter.
He was ordered held without bail.
Outside court, his appointed lawyer, David Patton, said he hoped "everyone lets the judicial process play out".
Late on Wednesday, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to say Saipov should get the death penalty.
Meanwhile, the FBI was questioning a second person from Uzbekistan, Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, 32.
A law enforcement official said Kadirov was a friend of Saipov's and might not have any role in the case.
Prosecutors said Saipov had 90 videos and 3800 photos on one of his two mobile phones, many of them Islamic State-related pieces of propaganda, including images of prisoners being beheaded, shot or run over by a tank.
Saipov left behind knives and a note, in Arabic and English, that included Islamic religious references and said, "Islamic Supplication. It will endure," FBI agent Amber Tyree says in court papers.
"It will endure" commonly refers to Islamic State, she says.
Questioned in his hospital bed, Saipov said he had been inspired by Islamic State videos and began plotting an attack about a year ago, deciding to use a truck about two months ago.
During the past few weeks, Saipov searched the internet for information on Halloween in New York City and for truck rentals, the agent says.
Saipov even rented a truck on October 22 to practise making turns and he initially hoped to get from the bike path across lower Manhattan to hit more pedestrians on the Brooklyn Bridge.
He even considered displaying Islamic State flags on the truck during the attack but decided it would draw too much attention, authorities say.
John Miller, deputy New York police commissioner for intelligence, said Saipov "appears to have followed, almost exactly to a T, the instructions that ISIS has put out".
In the past few years, the Islamic State has exhorted followers online to use vehicles, knives or other close-at-hand means of killing people in their home countries. The UK, France and Germany have seen deadly vehicle attacks since mid-2016.
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