Rahami faces two counts of using and attempting to use weapons of mass destruction, as well as one count of bombing and attempting to bomb a place of public use and public transportation.
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It also says that two days before the NY bombings, a video was recorded on a cellphone belonging to a member of his family showing him “igniting incendiary material in a cylindrical container” in a backyard at or near the family’s Elizabeth, New Jersey home.
The charges were filed by Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara.
The younger Rahami was not prosecuted in the stabbing; a grand jury declined to indict him. In May 2011, he made a three-month trip to Quetta, the New York Times reported, speaking to law enforcement officials citing Customs and Border Protection records. The other Manhattan bomb failed to detonate.
Federal charges in the bombings have yet to be filed.
New Yorkers pass a shattered storefront window on W. 23rd St.in Manhattan, Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016, in NY.
The blast Rahami allegedly set off was so powerful that it sent a dumpster flying more than 150 feet down the sidewalk and shattered windows more than a block away.
Police checked all garbage cans in the immediate area but found no other suspicious items.
Rahami was wounded during the shoot out and remains hospitalized, according to the Associated Press. It was also made from a pressure cooker connected with wires to a cell phone and packed with a high-explosive main charge, ball bearings and steel nuts, the complaint states. The bomb was similar to those used by the Boston Marathon bombers and a device left behind by the San Bernardino shooters, which did not go off.
His fingerprints and DNA were found at the scene of the Manhattan bombing, they said.
Surveillance video from Saturday shows a person authorities believe to be Rahami walking on 23rd Street at 7:53 p.m., about 37 minutes before the explosion, according to the complaint. Investigators have not publicly tied Rahami to those devices. “I never saw him with a group of friends”. Each of the items was shipped to a business in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, though the complaint does not specify which business.
According to court documents, between June 20, 2016 and August 10, 2016, eBay user “ahmad rahimi” purchased several items the FBI investigator described as being used in improved explosives including a Citric Acid USP/Food Grade 5Lb pack, “great for bath bombs and candy making”.
Federal Bureau of Investigation officers work at the site where Ahmad Khan Rahami, inset, was arrested after a shoot-out.
This frame from surveillance video released by the New Jersey State Police shows Ahmad Khan Rahami, wanted for questioning Monday, Sept. 19, 2016, in bombings that rocked the Chelsea neighborhood of NY and the New Jersey shore town Seaside Park over the weekend. The 28-year-old naturalized USA citizen from Afghanistan was being held on $5.2 million bail.
“I beg … for shahadat (martyrdom) and inshallah this call will be answered”, he wrote in a passage expressing concern about getting caught. Now they say he is a terrorist.
Prosecutors say the document ends: “The sounds of the bombs will be heard in the streets”. An Afghan immigrant wanted in the bombings was captured Monday after being wounded in a gun battle with police. “Death to your oppression”.
The White House has said the bombing attacks over the weekend appear to be an act of terrorism.
The FBI tried to check out the father’s story, and conducted what officials now describe as an “assessment” of that information.
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Rahami’s former classmates at Edison High School in Edison, New Jersey, were struggling to reconcile the “cool dude” who graduated in 2007 with the suspected terrorist who is now charged with five counts of attempted murder of a law enforcement officer and likely to be hit with federal charges that could send him to jail for life.
