The suspect accused of shooting two US National Guard members in an ambush in downtown Washington DC, last week has been charged with murder and other offences, making his first court appearance remotely from a hospital bed.
A judge ordered Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, held in custody without bond, citing the "sheer terror" of the shooting, blocks from the White House that killed one member of the National Guard and critically injured a second.
"It is fairly clear that he came across the country, 3,000 miles, armed, with a specific purpose in mind," Renee Raymond, a magistrate judge in Washington DC, Superior Court, said during the hearing.
A lawyer for Mr Lakanwal pushed for his release, citing his lack of criminal history.
Mr Lakanwal, an Afghan national, travelled from Washington state to the US capital to carry out the attack, prosecutors alleged.
A major in the Army National Guard of West Virginia shot Mr Lakanwal, and other members of the National Guard and a US Secret Service officer then subdued him, according to the complaint.
Mr Lakanwal wore a hospital gown and appeared to struggle to keep his eyes open during a roughly half-hour proceeding. A translator recounted the proceedings to him.
Mr Lakanwal is facing four criminal counts, including first-degree murder and assault with intent to kill while armed, according to a criminal complaint.
The complaint alleges he yelled "Allahu akbar!", meaning "God is Greatest," as he fired at Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and her fellow National Guard member Andrew Wolfe, 24. They were in Washington to support law enforcement as part of President Donald Trump's crackdown on crime.
Ms Beckstrom died the following day. Mr Wolfe remains in a serious condition in hospital
Mr Lakanwal's status as an Afghan immigrant who entered the US in 2021 under a program to resettle thousands of Afghans who assisted the US during the Afghanistan war quickly became a flashpoint in Trump's immigration crackdown.
Mr Trump today turned his ire on Somali immigrants, saying they should be unwelcome in the United States as he highlighted the long woes of the African country.
"Their country's no good for a reason" - Donald Trump on Somalia
His remarks come as a scandal unfolds in the state of Minnesota, where prosecutors say more than $1 billion went to non-existent social services, largely through false billing by Somali Americans.
In Somalia "they have no anything, they just run around killing each other," he told a cabinet meeting.
"Their country's no good for a reason. Their country stinks, and we don't want them in our country."
Mr Trump has a long history of deriding minorities and rose to political prominence spreading false conspiracy theories that former president Barack Obama was born in Kenya rather than the United States.
"We're at a tipping point," Mr Trump told the cabinet meeting.
"We could go one way or the other, and we're going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country."
Trump last week ended protections against deportations of Somalis in place in the United States since 1991, when Somalia descended into anarchy.
