Championing jihad, bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami vowed to martyr himself rather than be caught after setting off explosives in NY and New Jersey, and he’d hoped in a handwritten journal that “the sounds of bombs will be heard in the streets”, authorities said Tuesday as they filed federal charges against him.
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“I would imagine the complaint that the father made this morning where he said he called the Federal Bureau of Investigation two years ago to report the activities of his son, there’s an bad lot of people at our law enforcement and our citizens who would want to know if that was real and if that’s true”, Bollwage said.
The FBI said it does not yet know why the Chelsea neighborhood was targeted.
The FBI reviewed its databases and found no credible connection to terrorism or threat to the United States from the son, the official said. “But they check nearly two months, they say, ‘He’s OK, he’s clean, he’s not a terrorist.’ I say OK”.
He added: ‘Now they say he is a terrorist.
“When I heard about the attacks and realized the suspect was sleeping in a doorway across the street, I did what any American would do”, he said during a press conference. Federal prosecutors said they still were weighing charges over the bombings.
Video from the scene showed Rahami, conscious but stunned with wounds to his shoulder and leg, strapped to a gurney and loaded into an ambulance. But a grand jury did not indict him, possibly related to the allegedly recanted allegations. During the inquiry, the father backed away from talk of terrorism and told investigators that he simply meant his son was hanging out with the wrong crowd, including gang members, and acting like a thug, the officials said.
Mena and Rahami dated while attending Edison High School, and classmates said she was pregnant at prom.
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. Ahmad Khan Rahami and at least two Linden police officers were injured.
The investigation is now focused on motive.
About 10 minutes later, surveillance video showed the same man with the same duffel bag on West 27th Street, multiple law enforcement sources said. It’s unclear how helpful he is being.
“I’m not sure what is happening, exactly”, he said.
Details have begun to emerge about Rahami’s background and, perhaps, his alleged path to what officials described “an of terror”.
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.
However, Rahami’s wife eventually made it to the U.S. – and she left just days before Saturday’s attacks, according to a law enforcement official.
(CNN) – The man suspected of planting bombs in NY and New Jersey is a naturalized USA citizen – but has made several trips overseas.
In the Boston marathon attacks of 2013, brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev planted homemade bombs made from pressure cookers along the race route, killing three people and injuring scores more.
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Ahmad Rahami became radicalized during trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan over the last four years, authorities said, with friends and neighbors noting a change in the suspect after the 2014 visit.
