Rahami was charged for bombing a public place and for using weapons of mass destruction.
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He’s already facing state charges in connection with the shootout that wounded two officers.
Surveillance video shown on CNN and other U.S. television broadcasters shows a man believed to be Rahami dragging a bag big enough to hold the pressure cooker bomb used in the explosion before Saturday night’s blast in Manhattan.
These are among the key questions that have emerged in the wake of capture of the man suspected of planting bombs in NY and New Jersey over the weekend.
It is believed Mr Rahami bought the equipment for the bomb on eBay.
Federal prosecutors said Rahami injured 31 people in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood with a homemade bomb that detonated on Saturday night in a case that law enforcement authorities now regard as terrorism.
He planned two separate bunches of pipe bombs in New Jersey, one of which exploded just before a charity race was to begin on Saturday morning, though no one was killed or injured.
The most stunning piece of evidence mentioned in the complaint, however, is a video investigators found on a cellphone. Rahami is then seen entering the frame to recover the device, according to the complaint. He later retracted his complaint.
The blasts came two years after the Federal Bureau of Investigation looked into him but found nothing tying him to terrorism.
Rahami was not on the FBI’s radar at the time of the attacks, the L.A. Times reports, but Rahami’s father Mohammad called them in 2014 concerned about his son. The two reportedly have a child together.
Mohammad Rahami, suspect’s father: They checked that nearly two months. “They say, ‘He’s OK, he’s clean, he’s not a terrorist.’ I say OK”. “Death to your oppression”. The documents show prosecutors presented a grand jury with aggravated assault charges, arguing that Rahami allegedly stabbed a relative named Nasim Rahami in the leg.
He stood trial in front of a grand jury but was not indicted. “My son, he’s doing really bad, OK?”
A federal complaint filed Tuesday says that when he was captured by police in New Jersey, he had a handwritten journal in which he praised terrorists, including Osama Bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born al Qaeda figure killed in a US drone strike.
Rahami remains hospitalized with gunshot wounds from a shootout with police that led to his capture Monday outside a bar in Linden, New Jersey.
The New York bomb suspect, Ahmad Rahami, was on Tuesday charged for the blasts in New York and New Jersey.
The investigation is now focused on motive.
The official, and other U.S. security sources, said Mr Rahami underwent additional security screening upon returning from overseas but passed each time.
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When he was arrested, Rahami was carrying a journal with handwritten praise for Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan, radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden.
