Several top officials, including New York Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo, have already deemed Rahami’s acts as terrorism.
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“He’s OK, he’s clean, he’s not a terrorist”, Rahami’s father told American newspaper “The New York Times”, referring to the FBI’s outcome two years ago.
The police claim that he is also responsible for the backpack pull of pipe bombs, found later on Sunday, in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
Federal prosecutors said they were still drawing up charges over the weekend bombings in New York City and a New Jersey seaside town that wounded 29 people.
Rahami was the subject of a manhunt that culminated with a shootout in New Jersey, where he was captured.
Investigators are looking into Rahami’s overseas travel, including a visit to Pakistan a few years ago, and want to know whether he received any money or training from extremist organizations. The FBI in Newark conducted an assessment and interviewed the father.
Federal officials say surveillance video shows a man believed to be Rahami at the scene of the Chelsea explosion and also at the scene where the pressure cooker device was left.
Another law enforcement official said the father “recanted the whole story” about his son associating with terrorists.
At approximately 10:30 a.m. on Monday morning, a uniformed Linden police officer approached a man later identified as Rahami outside a bar on East Elizabeth Avenue, according to the investigation. NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill said Rahami is in critical but stable condition, and has given no statements as he recovers.
Two US officials said Rahami had a small notebook on him when he was apprehended, which one of the officials said contained “ideological” musings.
Two U.S. officials told Reuters Rahami had travelled to Afghanistan and to Quetta, Pakistan, a city where support for the Taliban is significant. The reason for the trip was not immediately known, but Jones said Rahami returned more serious and quiet.
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Two years before the bombings that Ahmad Khan Rahami is suspected of carrying out in NY and New Jersey, his father told the police that his son was a terrorist, prompting a review by federal agents, according to two law enforcement officials.
