Bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami was charged Tuesday with planting a series of explosives in NY and New Jersey, including one that injured more than two dozen people when it blew up on a busy Manhattan street.
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New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said as investigators gathered information, they learned there were “certain commonalities among the bombs”, leading authorities to believe “that there was a common group behind the bombs”.
The shootout happened on Monday in Linden, New Jersey.
The law enforcement officials said at least one of Rahami’s relatives was in the auto, which appeared to be heading towards Kennedy Airport in NY after coming from New Jersey.
WABC-TV footage showed a man believed to be 28-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami being loaded into an ambulance on a stretcher in Linden, New Jersey.
Rahami was suspected of a spate of weekend bombings, including a blast in New York’s crowded Chelsea neighbourhood that wounded 29 people, and two in suburban New Jersey that caused no injuries.
“But given the United Nations meetings, we also have a particularly high level of federal resources here to help as needed”, he said.
“A lot of technology involved in this, but a lot of good, old-fashioned police work, too”, New York Police Commissioner James O’Neill said Monday.
The probe started when a pipe bomb blew up Saturday morning in Seaside Park, New Jersey, before a charity race to benefit Marines.
Officials did not disclose the identity of the five people apprehended near the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge Sunday night, but said they were not charged with any crime, were not under arrest and were no longer in custody. Those individuals were not under arrest. Another unexploded pressure-cooker bomb was found blocks away.
Electronic toll records show a vehicle to which he had access was driven from New Jersey to Manhattan and back to New Jersey the day of the bombing, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the case.
Sweeney wouldn’t detail how investigators zeroed in on Rahami as someone they wanted to question, but they were known to be poring over surveillance video and examining bomb fragments and components for evidence. The race was canceled and no one was injured.
Authorities said the blasts were looking increasingly like an act of terrorism with a foreign connection. On Sunday, police detonated a backpack with five bombs that was found outside a restaurant in Elizabeth, N.J. Police provided no specific description of the men who they said took the bag.
According to Cuomo, New York’s massive police force, about 34,500 uniformed officers, will be bolstered by an additional 1,000 state police and National Guard members, who will patrol bus terminals, airports and subway stations, along with more Federal Bureau of Investigation and city police, USA Today reported.
A third incident in Minnesota, where a man stabbed nine people before being shot, is being investigated separately as a “potential act of terrorism”, Obama said.
Rahami’s father, Mohammad Rahami, spoke with the FBI after the younger Rahami was charged in 2014 with stabbing his brother, according to the officials, who were not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
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 USA “slaughter” of Muslim fighters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Palestine. Officials said more than two dozen people were injured. He faces charges from federal prosecutors in both states. One of the devices exploded as a bomb squad used a robot to try to disarm it. “And there is no better example of that than the people of NY and New Jersey”.
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Authorities zeroed in on him as the potential bomber after a fingerprint and DNA obtained from one of the NY sites and “clear as day” surveillance video from the bombing scene helped identify him, according to three law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.
