A terrorist who set off a pressure cooker bomb in Chelsea last year has been on a hunger strike in jail, according to a letter he filed Friday.
Ahmad Khan Rahimi started the protest on Dec. 8 on the grounds that his family members were not allowed to visit him. He also claimed he was not allowed to call his lawyer, the New York Times reported.
βI am extremely frustrated and physically tired and mentally drained of the continuous run around they are giving me,β Rahimi wrote.
Rahimi, of Elizabeth, N.J., was convicted of several terror charges in October for planting homemade bombs in various locations in New York and New Jersey.
Thirty people were injured on Sept. 17, 2016, when a pressure cooker bomb filled with ball bearings and steel nuts detonated on 23rd Street, crumpling a dumpster while shrapnel flew through the air and shattered windows as far as 400 feet away.
Rahimi, who remains in custody as he awaits sentencing in January, has tried βto radicalize fellow inmates,β according to a separate letter acting U.S. Attorney Joon Kim wrote to Berman.
He shared bomb-making instructions, books on jihad, lectures by Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, and issues of an online magazine published by Al Qaeda, according to the Times.
Rahimi shared some of the extremist material with inmates he met during prayer sessions in jail, Kim wrote.
Among those who saw the texts was Sajmir Alimehmeti, a Bronx man who has been charged with providing material support to the Islamic State.
The former fried chicken restaurant worker, who prosecutors said was radicalized after a 2014 visit to his native Afghanistan, faces a mandatory life sentence.
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