Federal authorities formally charged 28-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami
Tuesday with planting a number of bombs in New York City and New Jersey
over the weekend.
Rahami is accused of use of weapons of mass
destruction, bombing a place of public use, destruction of property by
means of fire or explosive, and use of a destructive device during and
in furtherance of a crime of violence. Criminal complaints against
Rahami were unsealed in New York and New Jersey Tuesday.
Investigators believe Rahami planted bombs in New
York City, as well as in Elizabeth and Seaside Park, N.J. One of the
devices exploded in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood Saturday night,
wounding 31 people.
The court filings allege significant premeditation by
Rahami. An affidavit claims that he began buying bomb components in
June, purchasing citric acid, circuit boards, ball bearings and electric
igniters on eBay.
In a statement, the online auction site said it was
"proactively working with law enforcement authorities on their
investigation." The company later added, "The types of items bought by
the suspect are legal to buy and sell in the United States and are
widely available at online and offline stores."
In addition, video recorded two days before the
bombings and recovered from a family member's phone shows Rahami
igniting incendiary material in a cylinder, then shows the fuse being
lighted, a loud noise and flames, followed by billowing smoke and
laughter, the complaint said.
The court filings also include excerpts from a
handwritten journal found on Rahami following his arrest Monday.
Investigators say Rahami accused the U.S. government of "slaught[er]
against the mujahidean [sic] be it Afghanistan, Iraq, Sham [Syria],
Palestine ..."
The journal also lauded Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born
cleric killed in a 2011 drone strike, and Nidal Hasan, the former U.S.
Army major who went on a 2009 rampage at the Fort Hood military
installation.
Prosecutors say the document ends: "The sounds of the
bombs will be heard in the streets. Gun shots to your police. Death To
Your OPPRESSION."
Before the federal charges were filed, Rahmani was
already being held on $5.2 million bail, charged with the attempted
murder of police officers during the shootout that led to his capture
Monday outside a bar in Linden, N.J.
Ealier on Tuesday, Rahami's father claimed he called
the FBI on his own son two years ago -- but a source told Fox News that
he immediately recanted. And according to a neighbor, the father said in
2014 that his son may have been in contact with people overseas
collecting explosives, ABC News reported.
Rahami's father, Mohammad, spoke to reporters outside
his home in Elizabeth, N.J. "Two years I called the FBI, my son, he's
doing very bad, OK? But they check it almost two months... They say he's
not a terrorist. I said, 'OK.' Now they say he is a terrorist. I say,
'OK.'"
Rahami's father said that two years ago, his son "was
doing bad. Yeah, he stabbed my son, he hit my wife and I put him to
jail two years ago."
Mohammad Rahami added that Ahmad stabbed his brother
Nasser "for no reason." Later Tuesday, he told reporters that FBI agents
"[did] not do their job."
The FBI's Newark field office looked into the
accusations, a federal law enforcement source told FoxNews.com. Ahmad
Khan Rahami was in jail on an assault charge at the time, the source
said, but agents interviewed his father.
"He recanted immediately – he left that part out. He
said he didn’t mean his son was a terrorist, just that he was interested
in gang activity and watching violent videos. There was no derogatory
information on him, and no basis to continue the investigation," the
source said.
FBI's scrubbing of the allegations made against
Rahami at the time did not turn anything up -- or as a law enforcement
source close to the investigation described, the lead "washed out." Fox
News is told a full-blown investigation into Rahami was not opened.
Rahami was arrested for stabbing a person in the leg
and possession of a firearm in 2014. But a grand jury declined to indict
him, despite a warning from the arresting officer that Rahami was
likely "a danger to himself or others."
While the hunt for Rahami has ended, the
investigation into his alleged path from server at a family restaurant
to terrorist bomber is just beginning. Friends of Rahami’s who spoke
with media outlets trace the roots of his radicalism to his trips to
jihadist hotbeds in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“It’s like he was a completely different person,” a
friend of Rahami’s, Flee Jones, told the Times. “He got serious and
completely closed off.”
Rahami’s first documented trip to Pakistan was in
2005, when he visited Karachi as a 17 year old, The New York Times
reported. Rahami stayed in Karachi, known as a jihadi hotbed, for a few
months before returning to New Jersey in January 2006. In 2011, Rahami
made another lengthy trip, visiting Kandahar, Afghanistan, and Quetta,
Pakistan. He again visited Quetta from April 2013 to March 2014.
Multiple sources told Fox News that Rahami visited Afghanistan at least
three times. Rahami was stopped on one trip for secondary screening, but
he satisfied the questions and was cleared, a source told Fox News.
Rahami’s activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan are
unknown, and authorities said the excursions didn’t raise any red flags
at the time. Officials said at a Monday news conference they didn’t know
if Rahami had received any weapons or explosives training. He did have a
firearms license, however, The Washington Post reported.
But regardless of what he did during these trips,
Rahami’s demeanor changed when he came back to New Jersey. Rahami began
wearing traditional Muslim robes after one trip to Afghanistan, two
friends, Amarjit Singh and Jonathan Wagner, told the New York Times. He
grew a beard and began praying in the back of his family’s chicken
restaurant.
Rahami also exhibited anti-Western and anti-military
sentiment when he was around his young daughter, a former girlfriend,
Maria, told FoxNews.com.
“One time he was watching TV with my daughter and a
woman in a [military] uniform came on and he told [her], ‘That’s the bad
person,’” she said.
There are family influences on Rahami, too. Rahami’s
dad, Mohammad, told Wagner that he fought the Soviet Army in the 1980s
as a member of the mujahedeen, the same group he same group that spawned Usama bin Laden and a generation of
terrorists. Wagner said the elder Rahami didn’t approve of the current
U.S.-led fighting in Afghanistan.
One of Rahami’s brothers, Mohammad K., posted at least one jihadist message on Facebook, The Daily Beast reported.
While Rahami had little presence on social media, his brother posted a
meme in 2013 showing extremist fighters with the quote: “I bring men who
desire death as ardently as you desire life.” The same brother also
posted a 9/11 conspiracy theory video last month.
Rahami’s social life also was upended.
He stopped seeing Maria, allegedly ceased paying
child support and in 2014 married a woman in Pakistan. He wrote to New
Jersey Rep. Albio Sires that year seeking a visa to get his wife into
the U.S. Sires said Rahami was “kind of nasty.”
“At the time she was pregnant and in Pakistan,” Sires
said on MSNBC. “They told her that she could not come over until she
had the baby, because she had to get a visa for the baby.”
The wife, who has not been identified, was eventually
allowed into the U.S. She returned to Pakistan just days before the New
York and New Jersey bombings and was detained by authorities in the
United Arab Emirates on Monday, a U.S. official told The Los Angeles
Times.
Separately, a sister of Rahami's accused him of
trying to stab her but later recanted, Rep. Peter T. King, a member of
the House Homeland Security Committee, told The Washington Post.
Rahami was born in Afghanistan in 1988 and came
legally to the U.S. in January 1995, several years after his father
arrived in America as an asylum seeker, CNN reported. Rahami became a
naturalized citizen and was known as a “class clown” in high school,
Maria told FoxNews.com. Maria said Rahami got along with his classmates;
however, he still criticized American culture, comparing Western values
to the strict version of Islam practiced in Afghanistan.
Rahami majored in criminal justice at Middlesex
County College in Edison, N.J., but he dropped out of school before
finishing his degree, according to media reports.
Mohammad reportedly opened First America Fried
Chicken in 2002 on the ground floor of a home in Elizabeth. Family
members lived on the second floor. It’s unclear when Rahami last lived
at the address, but the location was raided by authorities on Monday
during their dragnet for Rahami.
Zobyedh Rahami, who said she was a sister of Ahmad's,
wrote online, "I would like people to respect my family's privacy and
let us have our peace after this tragic time. I would not like to answer
any questions."