Victor Alvarez, conspirator in 1993 NYC terror plot, set for release
A would-be terrorist convicted in a fiendish plot to bomb New York City landmarks was released to a Manhattan homeless shelter on Thursday — after declaring in court that he would stop taking his meds.
“I want to be free from mental health treatment,” Victor Alvarez loudly told his lawyer during an afternoon court appearance.
“I want to be free now.”
Alvarez, 54, was ordered fitted with an electronic monitoring bracelet by a judge who also signed off on a plan for him to move into the Bellevue Men’s Shelter in Kips Bay once the device is attached.
He arrived at the shelter in the rear seat of an SUV around 3:30 p.m.and was escorted by two federal probation officers who had been present in court.
Alvarez — whose long, scraggly white beard was partly covered by a cloth mask — declined to answer questions from The Post as he headed inside, carrying a backpack and a gray suit jacket on a hanger.
Alvarez on Thursday finished serving a 30-year prison sentence for conspiring with the late, blind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman to blow up the various Big Apple bridges and tunnels, as well as the United Nations and local FBI headquarters.
His crimes included helping stir diesel fuel and fertilizer for what the feds called a “witches’ brew” that was found inside a makeshift bomb factory in Queens when it was raided in 1993, disrupting the terror scheme.
Manhattan federal Judge Vernon Broderick agreed with prosecutors to impose the electronic monitoring and other restrictions on Alvarez, based in part on what court papers called the “documented mental health issues” that “contributed to [his] radicalization and violent behavior.”
“These issues continued to contribute to violent and disruptive behavior when the defendant was incarcerated,” prosecutors wrote.
“Between 1993 and 2013, the defendant received 155 prison disciplinary reports, including for assaulting, spitting on, and threatening officers, possessing a weapon, flooding his cell, and keeping containers of urine and rotten milk in his cell.”
Alvarez’s mental state improved after he began being “involuntarily medicated” in 2013, but Alvarez “has told prison doctors that he does not intend to continue taking psychiatric medication upon his release from prison,” prosecutors wrote.
In court on Thursday, Alvarez said he wanted to speak directly to the judge, but was told by Broderick to confer with his defense attorney instead.
Alvarez then turned to court-appointed lawyer Carla Sanderson and announced he planned to end his treatment.
Sanderson briefly argued against the restrictions sought by prosecutors — which also include a “risk assessment and mental health evaluation,” and mandatory participation in a “deradicalization program” — but was quickly overruled by the judge.
Alvarez was among nine followers of Abdel-Rahman who were found guilty along with him in 1995 following a nine-month trial that included audio and video recordings secretly made with the help of a turncoat bodyguard for the radical Islamic preacher.
In addition to planning a day of attacks as part of a “jihad” or holy war against the US, they were also convicted of conspiring with the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993.
In court papers filed earlier this month, prosecutors initially sought to have Alvarez sent to a halfway house for his first year of freedom.
But they modified that request on Tuesday, saying he could instead submit a plan for approval by the US Probation Office to live in a “residence, which may include a shelter.”
Under the restrictions approved by Broderick, if Alvarez is kicked out “for failing to abide by shelter rules or for his misbehavior,” he can be ordered into a halfway house for up to a year and only allowed out for “work, healthcare appointments, religious observances or other acceptable reasons as approved by Probation,” court papers say.
