Investigators haven’t been able to question a man charged with setting off bombs in NY and New Jersey because he’s too severely injured from his shootout with police, a law enforcement official said Thursday as the man’s father said he’d warned federal authorities about the man’s interest in jihadist material.
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The FBI released a surveillance image of two unidentified men who apparently made off with a bag that had contained one of the explosive devices allegedly planted by Chelsea bombing suspect Ahmad Rahami. Rahami’s notebook also suggests he was influenced by a variety of terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda and Boko Haram.
The indictment says video recovered from the mobile phone of a relative of Mr Rahami shows him lighting incendiary material in a cylindrical container two days before the bombings. No one was killed in the blasts.
A handwritten journal was found on the suspect that praised Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and jihadist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, the indictment added.
A New York Police Department deputy commissioner says federal investigators are likely reviewing their previous contacts with a 28-year-old man arrested in connection with a pair of bombings in New Jersey and New York.
The FBI interviewed Rahami’s father in 2014 after a violent domestic dispute. I can’t guarantee you 100 percent if he is a terrorist.
Federal agents have tried to question Rahami in the hospital, but New Jersey Republican Rep. Tom MacArthur, who said he received a classified briefing from the FBI, said Rahami was not cooperating.
His description of that contact differs starkly from the one given by law enforcement officials, who challenged the father’s account Thursday, saying he did not provide the Federal Bureau of Investigation with numerous details about his son that he now says he did. The grand jury, however, found there was not enough evidence to indict Rahami. A senior law enforcement official said the woman, Asia Bibi Rahami, has been cooperative “to a certain degree”. Investigators believe she left the USA for Pakistan in June. She is not, however, being treated as a suspect.
“We get leads like this all the time and 99.9 percent of them go nowhere”, the official said.
“We have no reason to believe they are involved”.
The bombings in Seaside Park and Manhattan spurred a manhunt that ended Monday in Linden.
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Investigators also said that Rahami had travelled extensively to Pakistan and Afghanistan in recent years.
