Tag Archives: New York City bombing

U.S. probing Afghan-born bomber’s motive, foreign travel

A still image captured from a video from WABC television shows a conscious man believed to be New York bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami being loaded into an ambulance after a shoot-out with police in New Jersey

By Joseph Ax and Mica Rosenberg

LINDEN, N.J. (Reuters) – U.S. investigators were looking on Tuesday for clues to why an Afghanistan-born man might have planted bombs around the New York area over the weekend, including whether the suspect had accomplices or was radicalized overseas.

Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, was arrested on Monday in Linden, New Jersey, after a gun battle with police. They were summoned by a neighborhood bar owner who thought the bearded man sleeping against his closed tavern’s front door in pouring rain resembled the bombing suspect.

Rahami and two police officers were wounded in the exchange of gunfire.

The events put New York on edge and fueled the debate about U.S. security seven weeks before the presidential election, with candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton clashing once again on Monday.

Rahami was suspected of a spate of weekend bombings, including a blast in New York’s crowded Chelsea neighborhood that wounded 29 people, and two in suburban New Jersey that caused no injuries.

He lived with his family above the First American Fried Chicken restaurant in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

The suspect’s foreign trips were coming under scrutiny, with U.S. media reporting that he had traveled to Pakistan and his native Afghanistan multiple times. Police were looking into whether he was radicalized during that time.

U.S. security sources have confirmed that Rahami underwent secondary screening after returning from foreign travel in recent years and passed on every occasion.

Travelers coming from Afghanistan and Pakistan, which both have a strong Taliban presence, are routinely required to undergo secondary screening.

“There could have been a more intensive holding and screening in that situation,” U.S. Senator Angus King, an independent from Maine, told CNN. “The problem is what happened next didn’t really go into any depth.”

Rahami’s wife left the United States a few days before the bombings, CNN reported on Tuesday, citing a law enforcement source.

‘ACT OF TERROR’

Authorities did not offer any immediate information on the possible motives of Rahami, whom Union County prosecutors charged with five counts of attempted murder in the first degree and two second-degree weapons charges.

He was in critical but stable condition as a result of his wounds, and police had not yet been able to interview him in depth, New York Police Department Commissioner James O’Neill said on Tuesday.

O’Neill, who was sworn in as commissioner on Monday, said he was encouraged that officers found Rahami hiding alone.

“It’s a good sign that we found him in a doorway,” O’Neill told CBS “This Morning.” “Hopefully that means he had nowhere to go.”

More charges were expected to be brought against Rahami in federal court. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called the Saturday night bombing “an act of terror.”

Rahami is also suspected of planting a bomb that exploded on the New Jersey shore on Saturday, a device found near the New York blast, and up to six more devices found near the Elizabeth train station on Sunday night.

All of the people injured in Saturday night’s blast have been released from hospitals.The bombings and subsequent manhunt prompted even greater security in New York. The largest U.S. city was already on high alert for a gathering of world leaders at the United Nations in New York for the annual General Assembly this week. An additional 1,000 officers were deployed.

The blasts, the manhunt and an apparently unrelated stabbing attack in Minnesota over the weekend created tensions similar to those that followed other recent attacks, such as the mass shootings in Orlando and San Bernardino, California.

The Minnesota attacker was described a “soldier of the Islamic State,” the militant group’s news agency said.

Rahami had not previously been identified as dangerous, but Elizabeth police knew of his family because of late-night noise and crowd complaints at its halal chicken restaurant.

(Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball, Julia Edwards, Susan Heavey and Doina Chiacu in Washington; Roberta Rampton, Hilary Russ and Daniel Trotta in New York, Roselle Chen in Linden, New Jersey, Brendan O’Brien in Milwaukee and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles.; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

NY bombing suspect’s family clashed with New Jersey city over restaurant

By David Ingram and Joseph Ax

NEW YORK/ELIZABETH, N.J. (Reuters) – Long before the FBI made Ahmad Rahami notorious as a suspect in this weekend’s bombings around New York, his family was well known in Elizabeth, New Jersey, for frequent skirmishes with neighbors over its fried chicken restaurant.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation plans to question Rahami, a 28-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Afghanistan, in the bombings that wounded 29 people in New York City on Saturday, as well as other devices that exploded in New Jersey without causing injury.

Rahami was taken into custody in Linden, New Jersey, about 20 miles (32 km) outside New York, after an exchange of gunfire with police officers on Monday.

Rahami was not listed on U.S. counterterrorism databases, three U.S. officials told Reuters. But he was well known to Elizabeth Mayor Chris Bollwage for the frequent complaints about noise at the family’s restaurant, on a commercial strip of a racially diverse, working-class neighborhood.

“The suspect was not on the radar of local law enforcement, but the fried chicken place that … the family owned, we had some code enforcement problems and noise complaints,” Bollwage told reporters.

His father, Mohammed Rahami, registered the business as Khan Fried Chicken in 2006, but four years later changed the name to First American Fried Chicken, citing “popularity,” according to state records.

The family lived above the store, which is wedged between a beauty salon and a shop advertising money transfers and computer help. On Monday authorities cordoned off an area around the building and were removing boxes. Officers were on the restaurant’s roof, going in and out of the residence, and one officer leaned out of a window, taking pictures.

The restaurant’s employees were serious and businesslike, rarely interacting with customers more than they had to, said Josh Sanchez, 24, and Jessica Casanova, 23, who called themselves frequent customers.

By 2008, Elizabeth police were battling with First American Fried Chicken over the restaurant’s 24-hour schedule. A city ordinance barred take-out stores from staying open past 10 p.m.

The restaurant was cited, and although the family appealed the decision, a New Jersey appeals court ruled against the family in 2014, according to records.

A lawyer who represented the Rahami family in the dispute could not be reached for comment on Monday.

The family filed a lawsuit around 2010, claiming they were being discriminated against, Bollwage said, adding that the city’s actions involving the restaurant were in no way related to the family’s religion or ethnic origin.

Rahami traveled to Afghanistan several years ago and afterward grew a beard and began wearing religious clothing, Flee Jones, a childhood friend, told Reuters.

The reason for the trip and its full impact on Rahami was not immediately known, but Jones said Rahami became more serious and quiet. Jones said he learned about the travel from one of Rahami’s brothers and last saw Rahami about two years ago.

“He was way more religious,” Jones said, adding, “I never knew him as the kind of person who would do anything like this.”

(Reporting by David Ingram in New York and Joseph Ax in Elizabeth, New Jersey; Additional reporting by Julia Harte, Mark Hosenball and Julia Edwards in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone and Alan Crosby)