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Ahmad Khan Rahimi Gets Life In Prison For Chelsea, New Jersey Bombings

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork/AP) — Ahmad Khan Rahimi, the man convicted of setting off bombs in Manhattan and in New Jersey in 2016, was sentenced to multiple terms of life in prison on Tuesday.

Rahimi was sentenced by a federal judge in Manhattan. A jury found Rahimi guilty of all eight charges against him last October, including using a weapon of mass destruction and bombing a public place.

Asked to speak at his sentencing Tuesday, Rahimi said he doesn't "harbor hate for anyone.''

Federal prosecutors said in presentence papers that Rahimi has not shown remorse and has tried to radicalize fellow prisoners at the federal jail, where he has been imprisoned since his arrest.

"He is proud of what he did, scornful of the American justice system, and as dedicated as ever to his terrorist ideology," they wrote.

Defense attorney Xavier Donaldson said that before the attacks, Rahimi, a naturalized U.S. citizen and native of Afghanistan, aspired to be a police officer and worked as a security guard after studying criminal justice at a community college.

"It was Mr. Rahimi's belief that he could help people while employed in a position that would guarantee him some type of pension," Donaldson wrote.

Rahimi's lawyers want him to be allowed to take college classes and occasionally see his family while behind bars, 1010 WINS' Glenn Schuck reported.

Thirty people were hurt in September of 2016 when Rahimi set off a pressure cooker bomb on West 23rd Street in Chelsea. Another bomb planted four blocks away never detonated.

That blast happened just hours after a small pipe bomb exploded along a Marine Corps road race in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. No one was hurt.

Rahimi was arrested in New Jersey two days later after a shootout with police. Rahimi was shot several times but survived.

Federal prosecutors and law enforcement officials called his conviction a win in the battle against extremists, CBS2's Janelle Burrell reported.

"Ahmad Khan Rahimi learned this is the wrong place to try to carry out an act of terrorism," said NYPD Deputy Commissioner John Miller said in October of 2017.

After Rahimi's conviction last fall, his father told CBS2 that he tried to warn the FBI two years before the bombing about his son's interest in radical groups. His brother said Rahimi was troubled and misguided by terrorist videos.

"He had a hard life growing up and eventually something in his head just flipped, he lost it," his brother Mohammad Rahimi said."He was fed up with his life and he chose this path."

(© Copyright 2018 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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