The National staff
NEW YORK // The Afghan-born man suspected of planting bombs in New York and New Jersey kept a notebook filled with extremist ramblings, including references to a cleric described as “bin Laden of the internet” and a Muslim former US army officer who went on a shooting rampage.
The phrase “Join us in our New [sic] front,” appears on a bloodstained page.
Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, was captured on Monday after a frantic manhunt and shoot-out and now faces ten charges, including attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, unlawful possession of a weapon and using weapons of mass destruction. Authorities in New York said Rahami was “directly linked” to last Saturday’s bombings in New York City and Seaside Park, New Jersey and possibly connected to pipe bombs on Sunday in Elizabeth, New Jersey — coincidentally the town where Rahami’s family ran a fast food restaurant. His wife, who is Pakistani, was intercepted on Monday while she was in transit in the UAE en route to Pakistan. Investigators are now trying to ascertain whether she knew of her husband’s plans.
What is known is that Rahami, who arrived in the US in 1995 after his father sought asylum, and became a naturalised US citizen in 2011 had made several long trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the last five years and married in July 2011, while he was in Pakistan. He was there again from April 2013 to March 2014 and visited Afghanistan before returning to the US.
At some point, Rahami also fathered a child with a woman from Edison, New Jersey who said her last contact with him was by phone in January.
Since 2002, his family have run the First American Fried Chicken restaurant in Elizabeth, New Jersey, living above the shop. For two years, Rahami studied criminal justice at Middlesex Community College and helped out in the restaurant kitchen. Like many youths of his age, he loved fast cars and rap music — until he started going abroad.
“At one point he left to go to Afghanistan and two years ago he popped up out of nowhere and he was real religious, and it was shocking,” said a friend, 27-year-old Flee Jones. In 2014, Rahami was arrested for allegedly stabbing a person in the leg and for possessing a firearm, but the charges went no further. However his own father, Mohammad, was sufficiently worried to contact the FBI about his fears that his son had turned terrorist, but later retracted his statement. On Tuesday, Mr Rahami confirmed he had twice contacted law enforcement, but did not elaborate.
Neighbours said Mr Rahami was well-liked and respected but he had had his own run-ins with the law. In 2005 he filed for bankruptcy and in 2011, he sued the Elizabeth police department, alleging discrimination and harassment when they acted on neighbourhood complaints about the restaurant’s late opening hours, but the lawsuit was dismissed.
The search for Rahami began after a small pipe bomb went off in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, close to the route of a charity run by Marine Corps. At 8.30pm that night, a bomb exploded in a skip in the Chelsea area of Manhattan, injuring 20 people. Closed-circuit TV showed a heavy-set, bearded man carrying a duffel bag. A few hours, a photographer discovered another device nearby, fashioned from a pressure cooker. The duffel bag was nearby, along with a handwritten note referring to terrorists including the Boston marathon bombers. A fingerprint from the pressure cooker led to Rahami.
Police descended on Rahami’s home before dawn on Monday. Not finding him there, they took the unusual step of sending out an emergency bulleting to millions of mobile phones in New York and New Jersey, asking the public to keep a lookout for him. A few hours later, the owner of a bar in Linden, New Jersey found a man sleeping in his doorway and recognised him as Rahami. When a police officer approached him at 10.30am, Rahami took out a handgun and shot him, hitting the officer’s protective vest. He fled, shooting as he ran, and narrowly missed another officer.
“I saw him on the corner with a handgun. He did not appear to be running. At first I thought he was a policeman, then hse started shooting at a police car,” said local businessman Peter Bilinskas, who witnessed the shoot-out that developed as more police arrived on the scene. Rahami was shot in the shoulder, forearm and leg and underwent surgery on Monday.
A backpack containing five bombs was found in a rubbish bin outside a pub in Elizabeth at about 9.30pm on Sunday
The note book police found contained references to Anwar Al Awlaki, a cleric born in New Mexico to Yemeni, who is believed to have planned terrorist operations for Al Qaeda and was dubbed “Bin laden of the internet” for his use of social media to spread his message and recruit followers. In 2011, Al Awlaki became the fist US citizen to be killed by a drone strike.
Rahami also wrote in his notebook about Major Nidal Hasan, an army psychiatrist who killed 13 people and wounded more than 30 others in a mass shooting at Ford Hood military base in Texas. After his arrest, it was revealed that Hasan and Al Awlaki had been in touch via email.
Until Rahami is well enough to be interviewed, whether he is another link in the chain emains unknown.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
