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FBI no longer seeking second person in connection with NYC attack

The FBI and the New York Police Department released a wanted poster of Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, who is not a suspect but a person of interest in their investigation of the New York City terror attack.

Law enforcement officials are no longer looking for a second person in connection to the apparent terror attack on New York City Tuesday, which left eight people dead in the city’s first terrorism-linked deaths since 9/11.

Though the FBI and the New York Police Department had earlier released a wanted poster of Mukhammadzoir Kadirov, who they believed had information related to the attack, officials announced at a Wednesday press conference that they are “no longer seeking that individual.”

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That announcement follows a Tuesday press conference, where New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo described 29-year-old Saipov as a “lone wolf” and assured reporters, “There’s no evidence to suggest a wider plot or a wider scheme.”

According to the poster, Kadirov is an Uzbek national — as is Sayfullo Saipov, the man accused of driving a pickup truck down a Lower Manhattan bike path and crashing into a school bus on Tuesday. Saipov was charged with one count of material support of support to a foreign terrorist organization and violence and destruction of motor vehicles in a criminal complaint filed Wednesday.

Joon Kim, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in Wednesday’s press conference that while the first charge carried a maximum sentence of life in prison, the second was “death-eligible.”

His office is still going through a process to determine whether to seek the death penalty, Kim said, but it’s possible that a future indictment will carry more or different charges for Saipov.

“Twenty-four hours away from the attack,” Kim said, “the investigation is very active and ongoing.”

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