The man suspected of planting bombs in NY and New Jersey may have aimed to inflict carnage incognito, but he didn’t succeed for long in concealing his identity.
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Surveillance video showed a man believed to be Rahami dragging what appeared to be a duffel bag with wheels near the site of the West 23rd Street explosion about 40 minutes before the blast, according to local and federal law enforcement sources.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing case.
A criminal complaint in Manhattan federal court provided new chilling descriptions of the motivations that authorities said drove the Afghan-born US citizen to set off explosives in NY and New Jersey, including a bomb that injured more than two dozen people when it blew up on a busy Manhattan street.
Rahami, a USA citizen born in Afghanistan, remained hospitalized Tuesday after surgery for a gunshot wound to his leg. Police in Union County charged him with five counts of attempted murder of a law enforcement officer following the shoot-out with police in Linden.
In one part of the book, Rahami wrote of “killing the kuffar”, or nonbelievers, a law enforcement official said.
In Rahami’s case, the law enforcement official said the Federal Bureau of Investigation had opened up an “assessment”, the least intrusive form of an Federal Bureau of Investigation inquiry. The family has a history of clashes with the community over the restaurant, which used to be open 24 hours a day, Bollwage said.
The Dumpster he placed the bomb in is also near the PATH train to New Jersey, so it may have just been a convenient public location.
It’s unclear what may have inspired Rahami to allegedly set the explosives, but Cohen said more and more, homeland security investigators have to rout out decentralized networks of would-be terrorists that are hard to identify before they strike.
The court complaint also describes Rahami buying bomb-making equipment so openly that he ordered citric acid, ball bearings and electronic igniters on eBay and had them delivered to a New Jersey business where he worked until earlier this month.
Rahami, who is of Afghan descent, was captured in Linden, a city in New Jersey not far from where he lived, after an exchange of fire with law enforcement agents.
Another law enforcement official said the father “recanted the whole story”.
Though FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr., said there is “no indication” of an active operating terror cell in the NY area, evidence suggests Rahami was not acting alone, sources told CNN. No one was injured.
No one was injured in the blast that followed a series of attacks in the United States over the weekend, including the Saturday night bombing that hurt 29 people in Manhattan.
A childhood friend, Flee Jones, said Rahami had become more religious after returning from a trip to Afghanistan several years ago.
“I’m not sure what is happening, exactly”, he said.
Then a shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bomb exploded Saturday night in New York’s Chelsea section, wounding 29 people, none seriously. An unexploded pressure-cooker bomb was found blocks away.
All five were questioned and released, Sweeney said.
For Rahami, 28, to face terrorism charges, the law says officials must determine he meant to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population” or “influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion”.
The backpack with five bombs inside was found in a wastebasket around 9:30 p.m. on Sunday outside a neighborhood pub in Elizabeth, about 16 miles from New York City.
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Rahami reportedly pulled a gun and shot officers Angel Padilla and Peter Hammer when they approached. The officer was saved by his bulletproof vest. He called on Americans to show the world “we will never give in to fear”.
