Rahami faces nine counts, including weapons of mass destruction and bombing a public place.
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Rahami, a USA citizen born in Afghanistan, remained hospitalized Tuesday with gunshot wounds to the leg, forearm and shoulder, authorities said.
The FBI said in a statement it “initiated an assessment of Ahmad Rahami based upon comments made by his father after a domestic dispute that were subsequently reported to authorities”.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted a year ago for his role in the Boston Marathon attacks and sentenced to death, also first faced charges in his hospital bed while he was still recovering from injuries sustained in a gunfight with police. “Death to your oppression”.
Since his arrest, the mother of Rahami’s young daughter has been granted temporary sole custody of the child by a judge in New Jersey.
The FBI is seeking two men pictured with a suitcase that allegedly contained a bomb which failed to explode in NY on Saturday.
That second device was tested for fingerprints, and the criminal complaint said all 12 prints found were matches for Rahami.
He’s also accused of leaving another set of explosives in a trash bin by a train station in another New Jersey town. The bag contained multiple explosive devices, including one that blew up as police tried to disarm it with a robot. He had also visited Afghanistan and Pakistan in recent years, but investigators found no “ties to terrorism”. The complaint said 31 people were injured in that incident.
The White House said on Tuesday (September 20) it appeared that bombing attacks in NY and New Jersey on the weekend were an act of “terrorism”.
Federal prosecutors said Rahami bought components online and recorded a video of himself igniting a blast in a backyard.
Police had earlier said they believed the two men did not appear to be related to the plot.
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When Ahmad Rahami was arrested, prosecutors said he was carrying a journal that praised Osama bin Laden and other Muslim extremists, fumed about what he saw as the USA government’s killing of Muslim holy warriors and declared, “Death to your oppression”. He was arrested after he wounded two police officers before he was shot and captured in Linden, N.J., where he had been spotted sleeping in the vestibule of a closed bar.
