It’s all about how you pull the trigger.
That’s what Brooklyn resident turned ISIS sniper instructor Ruslan Asainov taught his students in the terrorism organization, new video revealed in federal court shows.
Prosecutors presented the footage at Asainov’s in Brooklyn Federal Court trial Wednesday.
“I would give a three hour lesson, just on that, just to pull the trigger,” Asainov, 46, said during an interview with law enforcement agents.
Asainov, a naturalized U.S. citizen who left his wife and child in Brooklyn to join ISIS, made his way to Syria via Turkey in 2013 to become a “warrior, sniper and sniper trainer” for the jihadis, federal prosecutors allege.
He became a sniper instructor, gave weapons training to dozens of other ISIS members and tried to get money and equipment for the terrorist group, including night vision scopes, prosecutors said.
“You need to know math. You need to know how to take care of your rifle. You need to know bullets. You need to know optics, right?” he said. “Rifles, bullets, optics. You need to know ballistics. You need to know corrections, how to make corrections. You need to know wind. You need to know the temperature.”
When he’s asked asked if he teaches all of that to his students, Asianov responded, “All of them, yes… How to actually pull the trigger.”
The government presented an array of expert witnesses on ISIS, on sniper instruction and on weapons over the past few days, as well as a federal Bureau of Prisons official who confiscated a small, makeshift ISIS flag from Asainov’s cell in the former Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.
Jail officials found the flag on Sept. 17, 2020, and Bureau of Prisoners Lieutenant Judith Woods, testified that she was called in to remove it.
“Several times I asked him and several times he refused to turn it over,” she testified Wednesday. Finally he acquiesced, asking her, “What’s the big deal? It’s mine. It’s religious. It has to do with my religion,” she said.
Asainov’s lawyers say that he only went to Syria because he wanted to live as a devout Muslim under Sharia law.
If convicted of conspiring to provide material support for terrorists, he could face life in prison.