Filings provide chilling details of motive

FBI had looked into suspect in 2014

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Ahmad Khan Rahami vowed to martyr himself rather than be caught after setting off explosives in New York and New Jersey, and he’d hoped in a handwritten journal championing jihad that “the sounds of bombs will be heard in the streets,” federal terrorism charges lodged against him Tuesday alleged.

Criminal complaints in Manhattan and New Jersey federal courts provided chilling descriptions of what authorities say drove the Afghan-born U.S. citizen to set off explosives in New York and New Jersey, including a bomb that injured more than two dozen people when it blew up on a busy Manhattan street.

Meanwhile, more details emerged Tuesday about Rahami’s past, including the disclosure that the FBI had looked into him in 2014 but came up with nothing.

According to the court complaints, Rahami’s journal included a passage that accused the U.S. government of slaughtering Muslim holy warriors in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.

“Inshallah [God willing] the sounds of the bombs will be heard in the streets. Gun shots to your police. Death to your OPPRESSION,” the journal ended.

One portion expressed concern at the prospect of being caught before being able to carry out a suicide attack and the desire to be a martyr, the complaints said. Still another section included a reference to “pipe bombs” and a “pressure cooker bomb” and declared: “In the streets they plan to run a mile,” an apparent reference to one of the blast sites, a charity run in a New Jersey shore town.

There also were laudatory references to Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki – the American-born Muslim cleric who was killed in a 2011 drone strike and whose preaching has inspired other acts of violence – and Nidal Hasan, the former Army officer who went on a deadly shooting rampage in 2009 at Fort Hood, Texas, the complaints said.

Authorities said some of the journal was unintelligible because it was damaged in gunfire when Rahmani, 28, initiated a shootout that led to his capture Monday outside a bar in Linden, N.J. Initially charged with attempted murder of police officers, he was held on $5.2 million bail.

Rahmani remains hospitalized with gunshot wounds.

The court complaints describe Rahami buying bomb-making equipment so openly between June and August that he ordered citric acid, ball bearings and electronic igniters on eBay and had them delivered to a Perth Amboy, N.J., business where he worked until earlier this month.

San Jose, Calif.-based eBay Inc. noted that the products are legal and widely available and said the company had worked with law enforcement on the investigation.

Video recorded two days before the bombings and recovered from a family member’s phone shows him igniting incendiary material in a cylinder, then shows the fuse being lighted, a loud noise and flames, followed by billowing smoke and laughter, the complaints said.

Federal agents would like to question Rahami. But Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., who received a classified briefing from the FBI, said Rahami was not cooperating; that could also be a reflection of his injuries.

Investigators are looking into Rahami’s overseas travel, including a visit to Pakistan a few years ago, and want to know whether he received any money or training from extremist organizations.

In 2014, the FBI opened up an “assessment,” the least intrusive form of an FBI inquiry, based on comments from his father after a domestic dispute, the bureau said in a statement.

“The FBI conducted internal database reviews, interagency checks and multiple interviews, none of which revealed ties to terrorism,” the bureau said.

A law-enforcement official said the FBI spoke with Rahami’s father in 2014 after agents learned of his concerns that the son could be a terrorist. During the inquiry, the father backed away from talk of terrorism and told investigators that he simply meant his son was hanging out with the wrong crowd, according to the official, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Rahami’s father told reporters Tuesday outside the family’s fried-chicken restaurant in Elizabeth, N.J., that he called the FBI at the time because Rahami “was doing real bad,” having stabbed the brother and hit his mother. Rahami was not prosecuted in the stabbing; a grand jury declined to indict him.

“But they checked, almost two months, and they say, ‘He’s OK, he’s clear, he’s not terrorist.’ Now they say he’s a terrorist,” the father, Mohammad Rahami, said. Asked whether he thought his son was a terrorist, he said: “No. And the FBI, they know that.”

The disclosure of the father’s contacts with the FBI raises questions about whether there was anything more law enforcement could have done at the time to determine whether Rahami had terrorist aspirations.