A cell phone connected to the pressure cooker also provided clues, the official said.
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In addition to bin Laden, the journal contained references to US-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and Fort Hood, Texas, mass shooter Nidal Hasan.
Rahami already faces five counts of attempted murder of police officers in New Jersey.
It wasn’t clear if he had retained an attorney, nor was it known when he would be arraigned on the charges. Rahami underwent surgery on his wounds and remains in hospital. Another bomb exploded harmlessly in a New Jersey seaside town earlier the same day.
Prosecutors said 31 people were wounded in the Chelsea attack on Saturday.
Posting under username “Yaafghankid78”, Rahami favorited posts praising jihad, including one translated in the complaint as “jihad is a martyr’s anthem”.
Federal prosecutors portrayed Rahami, who came to the United States at age 7 and became a naturalized citizen, as embracing militant Islamic views, begging begged for martyrdom and expressing outrage at the US “slaughter” of Muslim fighters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Palestine.
But when the FBI talked with the father, he recanted his claim that his son was a terrorist but expressed concern that Ahmad was engaged in criminal or gang activity, a federal law enforcement source said.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday, the father says he contacted authorities because his son was causing trouble and not because of terrorist motivations.
Officials have said there is no indication Rahami was connected to any local or foreign terror cell, and they believe he acted alone.
In the last five years, Rahami traveled for extended periods to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The father of alleged bomber, Ahmad Khan Rahami, called law-enforcement authorities in 2014 and said his son was a terrorist. The grand jury declined to indict Mr. Rahami, citing insufficient evidence. “But they check nearly two months, they say, ‘He’s OK, he’s clean, he’s not a terrorist.’ I say OK”.
At the time, the son was being held on an assault charge for stabbing his brother during a domestic dispute, another law enforcement official said. “And the Federal Bureau of Investigation, they know that”. He told officials he was visiting his wife, uncles and aunts.
FBI agents walk around the roof outside an apartment during an investigation at a building Monday, Sept. 19, 2016, in Elizabeth, N.J. Justice Department guidelines restrict the types of actions agents may take; they can not, for instance, record phone calls without obtaining a higher level of approval or developing more grounds for suspicion.
The White House has said the bombing attacks over the weekend appear to be an act of terrorism.
While he was in Pakistan in 2011, Rahami married a Pakistani woman. At the time, he was employed by Summit Security, a private contractor.
Rahami, a US citizen born in Afghanistan, remained hospitalized Tuesday after surgery for a gunshot wound to his leg.
He is married to a Pakistani woman and brought her to the USA as his wife, said the official.
AP spokesman Paul Colford said the news cooperative told law enforcement officials about Rahami’s work at the Cranbury facility.
A neighbor said Rahami had recently started dressing in more traditional clothes such as long tunics and sandals, which she said was how his father dressed.
Video found on a family member’s mobile phone dated two days before the bombings and taken near his home in New Jersey showed him lighting a fuse that igniting incendiary material packed in a partially buried cylinder.
William Sweeney, the FBI’s assistant director in NY, said on Monday that that at the time of the bombing, Rahami apparently was not on the FBI’s radar. No one was injured.
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Surveillance video allegedly shows Rahami on 23rd Street in Chelsea Saturday night, just hours before the explosion that injured 29 people.
