Two men happened upon the suitcase and, after rummaging through it, removed the plastic-bag-wrapped pressure cooker and took the suitcase. He said he told the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2014 about his son’s apparent radicalization after household tensions led to a fight in which another of his sons was stabbed. That device did not detonate.
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“I put him in jail two years ago”, the elder Rahami said.
Rahami, a naturalized USA citizen who emigrated from Afghanistan with his family at the age of 7, was motivated by militant Islamic views, prosecutors said, citing a journal he was carrying in which he begged for martyrdom and expressed outrage at the US “slaughter” of Muslim fighters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Palestine.
Students at the school wrote get well cards for Padilla and officer Pete Hammer, who were both hurt in Monday’s shootout with Ahmad Khan Rahami.
The FBI charged Rahami with using a weapon of mass destruction Tuesday. He could be sentenced to life in prison.
According to the court documents, investigators believe Rahami used an eBay account with the username “ahmad rahimi” to buy citric acid, a circuit board, electric igniters and hundreds of ball bearings between June 20 and August 10. As well as the two children by his wife, Rahami also has a child by a high school girlfriend. Investigators said the second bomb had “numerous” electric igniters. The FBI said it checked databases, consulted other agencies and conducted interviews but found nothing tying Rahami to terrorism. A number of devices were also found, including an abandoned backpack at Elizabeth train station.
The police commissioner, James O’Neill, said they were considered “witnesses”.
A New Jersey imam spoke against violence and in support of law enforcement during the first Friday prayer service since a local man was charged in the New Jersey and NY bombings.
Rahami has been investigated before, with no results. That other neighbor says a fire broke out in Rahami’s backyard last Thursday.
Federal prosecutors in NY noted that while they filed charges against Rahami on Tuesday, he remains in the custody of state officials in New Jersey, who initially arrested him after Monday’s gunfight. But a federal law enforcement source told Fox 5 that Rahami has been unconscious and intubated, using a ventilator to breath, since his shootout with police on Monday.
The video also shows the two men who found the suitcase and chose to take it with them, while leaving the contents behind that night.
It is unclear how much information the report contained about Rahami’s activities during the 11 months he was in Pakistan, starting in April 2013, and about any other trips he made while overseas.
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In a journal uncovered by police, Rahami reportedly praised al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S. -born Muslim cleric and al-Qaeda propagandist killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011, as well as Nidal Hasan, the U.S. Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009. In a handwritten journal, he warned that bombs would resound in the streets and prayed he’d be martyred rather than caught.
