Was he radicalized by terrorists on a visit to his native Afghanistan? Was he a “lone wolf” who learned bomb-making from an old al Qaeda magazine but then was inspired by Islamic State propaganda online? Or was he just an angry young American of Afghan descent who snapped?
The FBI says there is no evidence linking New York City bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami to any clandestine terrorist cell, but investigators were just beginning to sift through mobile phone, social media and personal records of the 28-year-old, who was arrested Monday after a shootout with police in New Jersey.
The state prosecutor in Union County, New Jersey, filed charges against Mr. Rahami on five counts of attempted murder of a law enforcement officer and one count of second-degree possession of a weapon. As of Monday night, federal prosecutors had not filed any charges relating to the bombings.
Although officials publicly lauded the swiftness of Mr. Rahami’s apprehension, the sheer lack of information about what they suspect drove him to construct and plant homemade explosives in Manhattan and in two locations in New Jersey underscored what has become a confusing new chapter in America’s war on terrorism.
In a separate development, a 22-year-old U.S. citizen of Somali descent referred to “Allah” as he wounded nine people in a stabbing rampage at a Minnesota mall this weekend before he was shot to death by an off-duty police officer.
“What we saw in New York, New Jersey and Minnesota is emblematic of the new wave of terror,” Rep. Michael T. McCaul, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told The Washington Times on Monday evening.
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“Our enemies are remotely radicalizing people in our own backyards and promoting do-it-yourself jihad,” the Texas Republican said. “We are still struggling to keep up with it. We’ve materially failed to develop a coherent counter-radicalization plan here at home to stop suspects ‘left of boom’ — before it’s too late — and to identify them before they go down the path to violence.”
Mr. McCaul is slated to announce Tuesday what he said will be a “new nonpartisan counterterrorism strategy.” He told The Times that “we need a complete overhaul of our approach.”
“It’s time to get off the sidelines and into the game to shut down terrorist radicalization in our communities, including countermessaging extremist propaganda to keep our young people from being brainwashed,” he said. “But at the end of the day, we can’t bring Twitter to a gunfight. To win, we’ve got to make our enemies look like they’re losing — and that means destroying them overseas and making sure they spend more time looking over their shoulders than recruiting new generations of jihadists to plot against us.”
The latest developments follow a pattern sickeningly familiar to other attacks, including the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, last year’s shootings in San Bernardino, California, and this year’s slaughter in Orlando, Florida. But so does the frustration felt by officials behind the scenes, where federal and local law enforcement were seen to be wading through unknowns on Monday.
Questions arose at a press conference just hours after Mr. Rahami was taken into custody in Linden, New Jersey, near his hometown of Elizabeth and a few miles south of Newark Liberty International Airport. He was shot in the leg during a gunfight in which two Linden police officers were wounded.
Mr. Rahami underwent surgery for the gunshot wound to his leg, but his medical status was unclear Monday night.
William Sweeney, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York division, said that “the fact that he survived is excellent both from an investigative value and the fact that we didn’t lose a life.”
Mr. Sweeney told reporters that investigators had “no indication of a [terrorist] cell active” in New Jersey or New York City, where the manhunt for the bomber got underway Sunday night based on surveillance video near the explosion in Manhattan late Saturday.
Other sources suggested that Mr. Rahami had been turned into an Islamic extremist — perhaps during visits he reportedly made to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mr. Sweeney offered no such specifics beyond saying investigators were scrambling to pick through every aspect of the suspect’s life.
“I do not have information yet to show what the path to radicalization was,” the FBI assistant director said, adding that nothing was uncovered to indicate that Mr. Rahami was on the radar of law enforcement authorities before this weekend.
Mr. Sweeney made the remarks after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who told reporters Sunday that the attack did not appear to have a link to international terrorism, adjusted his assessment during an appearance Monday on CNN by saying he “would not surprised if we did have a foreign connection to the act.”
Mr. Cuomo did not specify what evidence drove him to make such a statement. By Monday afternoon, however, reports were swirling that Mr. Rahami, who came to New Jersey as a child when his parents immigrated from Afghanistan in the early 1990s, had returned to his native land sometime around 2012 and undergone a significant psychological shift.
One childhood friend from New Jersey told The New York Times that Mr. Rahami, who would have been 24 at the time, came back from Afghanistan a changed man. He traded his typical wardrobe of T-shirts and sweatpants for traditional Muslim robes, grew a beard and began praying in the back of his family’s chicken restaurant in Elizabeth, New Jersey, the friend said.
The Daily Beast cited unidentified U.S. officials as saying Mr. Rahami visited Pakistan several times since his trip to Afghanistan. It was unclear whether he traveled to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas along the country’s volatile western border with Afghanistan, which is home to the Haqqani network terrorist group and the Pakistani Taliban, U.S. officials said.
Four bombs
Despite the reports of such travel, law enforcement authorities said, Mr. Rahami remained the lone suspect in four incidents that involved homemade explosive devices in New York and New Jersey.
The most prominent was a shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bomb — similar to those used in the Boston Marathon attack — that detonated at about 8:30 p.m. Saturday on 23rd Street in Manhattan’s bustling Chelsea neighborhood, wounding 29 people but none seriously.
The second incident involved an unexploded pressure-cooker bomb that police discovered hours after the Chelsea explosion, a few blocks away from the blast site.
The third was a pipe bomb that blew up earlier Saturday in Seaside Park, New Jersey, near the route of a charity race that was supposed to benefit U.S. Marines. No one was injured, but the race was canceled.
The fourth was Sunday night, when five explosive devices were discovered in a trash can at a train station in Elizabeth, New Jersey. One of the devices exploded while a bomb squad robot tried to disarm it. No one was hurt.
Investigators said they were gathering evidence in the train station development and had not publicly tied Mr. Rahami to the train station bombs.
In an separate development, police reportedly uncovered surveillance footage showing two men walking down a street Saturday in Manhattan, where they saw a suitcase on a sidewalk. The men opened the suitcase, discarded a pressure cooker found inside and walked off with the bag.
The discarded pressure cooker is believed to be what police described as the unexploded device found late Saturday after the blast on 23rd Street in Manhattan. Authorities said Monday that the two men are not suspects but are being sought for questioning as witnesses.
Authorities said the bomb that detonated in Manhattan contained a residue of Tannerite, an explosive often used for target practice that can be picked up in many sporting goods stores.
With Mr. Rahami’s arrest, officials said they had no indication of more bombs or suspects to find, though they cautioned that they were still working to understand Mr. Rahami’s connections and motivations.
“I think the question has been all along is what was the motivation: Was it Islamist-based terror or was it some other motivation to detonate these explosive devices?” said Mr. McCaul, the House Homeland Security Committee chairman.
He cautioned that law enforcement must remain vigilant of the threat of simultaneous attacks using rudimentary homemade bombs.
“Remember, the old al Qaeda playbook manual always talked about simultaneous events, bombs going off simultaneously in multiple locations,” Mr. McCaul told MSNBC.
“This is very consistent with what we’ve seen in the past from both al Qaeda and ISIS in terms of the Times Square bomber, the Boston bomber, as you recall used pressure cooker bombs,” the congressman said. “We’ve seen this movie before, using pressure cookers to kill Americans.”
The arrest
Law enforcement sources said a fingerprint lifted from one of the New York City locations, as well as “clear as day” surveillance video from the Chelsea bombing scene helped identify Mr. Rahami as a suspect.
Mr. Sweeney, the FBI assistant director, said five people were pulled over Sunday night in a vehicle associated with Mr. Rahami but were questioned and released. He declined to say whether those people might later face charges.
Other sources said at least one of Mr. Rahami’s relatives was in the car, which appeared headed toward New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport after coming from New Jersey.
Derek Armstead, the mayor of Linden, New Jersey, said the break in the case came late Monday morning when the owner of a bar reported someone asleep in his doorway. A police officer went to investigate and recognized the man as Mr. Rahami, police and the mayor said.
Authorities said Mr. Rahami pulled a gun and shot the officer — who was wearing a bulletproof vest — in the torso before more officers joined in a gunbattle that spilled into the street.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national advocacy group, welcomed Mr. Rahami’s arrest.
“Our nation is most secure when we remain united and reject the fear-mongering and guilt by association often utilized following such attacks,” the group said in a statement. “We stand together with our fellow Americans in New York, New Jersey and Minnesota as we deal with the troubling phenomenon of domestic terrorism.”
Afghanistan’s ambassador to the U.S., Hamdullah Mohib, also issued a statement condemning the bombings and asserting that his government stands “ready and willing to help with this matter if U.S. authorities request our cooperation.”
“Afghanistan and its people desire peace above all else, and stand in solidarity with Americans against all forms of hatred and violence,” Mr. Mohib said.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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