Federal prosecutors on Tuesday charged the Afghan-born man suspected of weekend bombings in NY and New Jersey with 10 counts including use of weapons of mass destruction, portraying him as a jihadist who begged for martyrdom and praised Osama bin Laden.
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The FBI’s 2014 inquiry began after his father expressed concerns his son might be a terrorist, law enforcement officials said Tuesday.
A United States official told reporters that Rahami was a naturalised American citizen who made at least three months-long trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan since 2014. “Death to your oppression”, Rahami, who came to the U.S. at age 7, wrote in a journal.
Authorities said some of the journal was unintelligible because it was damaged in gunfire when Rahmani, 28, initiated a shootout that led to his capture Monday outside a bar in Linden, New Jersey. Investigators are looking into his previous overseas travel and other run-ins with the law.
His father, Mohammad Rahami, briefly emerged on Tuesday from the family’s restaurant in Elizabeth, New Jersey, about 30km west of New York City, telling reporters, “I called the Federal Bureau of Investigation two years ago”.
William Sweeney, the FBI’s assistant director in NY, said on Monday that that at the time of the bombing, Rahami was apparently not on the FBI’s radar.
In any case, the Federal Bureau of Investigation checked its databases and other sources and closed the inquiry in a matter of weeks after seeing nothing tying the Afghan-born USA citizen to terrorism, three law enforcement officials said.
Ahmad Khan Rahami was wounded in a gun battle with Linden, New Jersey, police that erupted when he was discovered sleeping in a bar doorway.
“But they checked, nearly two months, and they say, ‘He’s OK, he’s clear, he’s not terrorist.’ Now they say he’s a terrorist”, the father said outside the family’s fried-chicken restaurant in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
The FBI has said Rahami apparently was not on its radar at the time of the bombing.
In addition to the federal charges, New Jersey state prosecutors from Union County have charged Rahami with five counts of attempted first-degree murder for firing at police officers and two second-degree weapons counts.
That issue arose after the Orlando massacre in June, when FBI Director James Comey said agents a few years earlier had looked into the gunman, Omar Mateen, but did not find enough information to pursue charges or keep him under investigation.
As the charges were made public, the White House for the first time said it appeared the attacks were an act of terrorism.
The younger Rahami worked as an unarmed night guard for two months in 2011 at an AP administrative technology office in Cranbury, New Jersey.
And the complaints said in his bloodied journal – damaged by shots from his gun battle with police – he fumed that the US government was slaughtering Muslim holy warriors and alluded to plans for revenge. At the time, he was employed by Summit Security, a private contractor.
The injured suspect was wheeled away on a stretcher under heavy security, ending a 50-hour manhunt that followed two explosions in which, nearly miraculously, no one was killed.
The full federal complaint against Rahami can be read here.
Ball bearings were found in two pressure cooker bombs placed four blocks apart in the Chelsea neighborhood of NY late Saturday.
Evidence against Rahami includes bombs found at an Elizabeth train station, fingerprints found on an undetonated bomb found at 27th Street in Manhattan, and Surveillance video taken from near the Chelsea bombings.
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An explosive device went off in a New Jersey train station as the NY bomb squad was attempting to disarm it with a robot.
