ELIZABETH, N.J., (Reuters) – Federal prosecutors yesterday charged the Afghan-born man arrested after weekend bombings in New York and New Jersey with four counts including use of weapons of mass destruction and bombing a place of public use.
The charges were laid out in a federal complaint that said a handwritten journal was found on the suspect, Ahmad Khan Rahami, that praised Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and accused the U.S. government of slaughtering Islamist fighters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Palestine.
The federal charges come after the father of Rahami, the naturalized American citizen captured on Monday in New Jersey after a shootout with police, said he had reported concerns about his son being involved with militants to the Federal Bureau of Investigations two years ago.
The FBI acknowledged it had investigated Rahami in 2014, but found no “ties to terrorism” and dropped its inquiry.
The White House said yesterday it appeared that the bombings were “an act of terrorism” as an investigation continued in to whether Rahami had accomplices, or if he picked up militant Islamic views during trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“The investigation is active and ongoing, and it is being investigated as an act of terror,” U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said in Lexington, Kentucky.
Rahami, 28, was suspected in the weekend bombings, including a blast on Saturday night in New York City’s Chelsea neighbourhood that wounded 29 people, and another on the New Jersey shore that injured no one earlier that day.
Rahami was arrested on Monday in Linden, New Jersey, after a shootout with police that left him with multiple gunshot wounds. Rahami was listed in critical but stable condition, and police had not yet been able to interview him in depth, New York Police Department Commissioner James O’Neill said.
His father, Mohammad Rahami, briefly emerged yesterday from the family’s restaurant in Elizabeth, New Jersey, about 20 miles (30 km) west of New York City, telling reporters, “I called the FBI two years ago.” The Federal Bureau of Investigation said in a statement that it began an assessment of the younger Rahami in 2014 based on comments his father made about his son after “a domestic dispute.”
“The FBI conducted internal database reviews, interagency checks, and multiple interviews, none of which revealed ties to terrorism,” the FBI said.
One U.S. law enforcement official said the elder Rahami met twice with the FBI, first saying he was worried his son was hanging out with people who might have connections to militants, but two weeks later contending his real concern was that the son was associating with criminals.
Another law enforcement official said the father “recanted the whole story” about his son associating with terrorists.
The comments by the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, showed Rahami had been brought to the attention of the FBI before the bombings much like others who have carried out attacks in the United States in recent years.
