Police arrested an Afghanistan-born American suspected of carrying out this weekend’s bombing in New York City that injured 29 people and planting other devices in New York and New Jersey following a Monday morning gun battle with the suspect.
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Kelly’s comments come as Rahami’s father Mohammad Rahami Sr, said he warned authorities two years ago that his son had become violent.
The arrest came just hours after police issued a bulletin and photo of Rahami, a naturalized USA citizen from Afghanistan with an address in Elizabeth, New Jersey.
Police in New York and neighbouring New Jersey have been on alert in the wake of bomb blasts Saturday, first along the planned route of a US Marines-sponsored charity run in New Jersey, and later in New York City’s fashionable Chelsea neighbourhood.
Federal prosecutors have charged Ahmad Khan Rahami with planting a series of bombs in NY and New Jersey, including one that injured 31 people when it blew up on a busy street. Authorities were still searching for two people who removed that bomb from a duffle bag after it had allegedly been placed on the street by Rahami. Also Tuesday, investigators disclosed that when Rahami was captured, he had a notebook with him that contained extremist ramblings. “I know there are other devices, but I don’t know what they are made up of but they are going to have to be removed and all the fragments from the other pieces will have to be picked up so the FBI can investigate this fully”. Still, some of the restaurant’s customers said Rahami was more likely to talk about his interest in cars.
Shortly after the blast a few blocks away, investigators found a pressure cooker with dark-colored wiring connected by silver duct tape to what appeared to be a cellphone, officials said.
Prosecutors in Union County, New Jersey charged Rahami with five counts of attempted first-degree murder and two second-degree weapons counts.
“The more we learn with each passing hour is it looks more like terrorism”, de Blasio said in a later interview on NY1 News.
The ex-police commissioner has been praising officers for their hard work in apprehending Ahmad Khan Rahami, the suspected Chelsea and New Jersey bomber.
Investigators said they had not yet determined a motive for the bombings and there was no indication that an extremist cell was operating in the area, William Sweeney of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s NY division told a news conference.
The person wasn’t authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Linden, New Jersey, Mayor Derek Armstead says the owner of a bar found the man sleeping in his hallway Monday morning.
U.S. President Barack Obama praised police for the quick apprehension of Rahami and said he saw no connection between the explosions and a separate weekend incident where a man stabbed nine people at a mall in central Minnesota before being shot dead. Officials have been sifting through evidence retrieved from the scenes of the blasts in NY and New Jersey, a stabbing spree in Minnesota, and a backpack loaded with explosive devices discovered in Elizabeth, N.J.
The type of device used in Chelsea was a “pressure cooker bomb”, similar to the construction of the two devices that exploded at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013.
Five people were pulled over Sunday night in a vehicle associated with Rahami but were questioned and released, Sweeney said, declining to say whether they might later face charges.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in television interviews that President Barack Obama, who is already in NY, was being briefed on the case.
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“He’s a very friendly guy”, patron Ryan McCann said. “We do not, and never will, give in to fear”. De Blasio hailed the emergency alert system that was used in the NY area to notify millions that law enforcement was searching for the suspect.
