New Jersey & New York bombs

[robert99]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/nyregion/new-york-new-jersey-bombing.html
When Ahmad Khan Rahami returned in March 2014 from a nearly yearlong trip to Pakistan, he was flagged by customs officials, who pulled him out for a secondary screening. Still concerned about his travel, they notified the National Targeting Center, a federal agency that assesses potential threats, two law enforcement officials said.
(The National Targeting Center‐Passenger (NTC-P) is part of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection see Cargo and Person Screening | ISE )
Investigators are interested in learning more about both a three-week trip he made to Afghanistan and another trip he may have made to Ankara, Turkey, according to the law enforcement officials, who spoke about the continuing investigation under the condition of anonymity. The report by the targeting center did not mention any travel to Turkey, according to one of the officials.
...
Records the New York Police Department provided to customs officials indicate that Mr. Rahami traveled to Ankara for an unspecified length of time in January 2014, according to another law enforcement official and documents obtained by The New York Times.

The new information being gleaned from Mr. Rahami’s notebook, a copy of which was provided to The Times by another law enforcement official, who was not authorized to speak to the press, paints a substantially different picture from what could be understood by the snippets highlighted in the criminal complaint filed in federal court on Tuesday night.

That summary mentioned Anwar al-Awlaki, once Al Qaeda’s leading propagandist, who is equally popular with the Islamic State’s followers, but made no mention of the ISIS spokesman and senior strategist Abu Muhammad al-Adnani.

The pages of Mr. Rahami’s journal echo the talking points of Mr. Adnani, who in May advised followers around the world to commit violence in their home countries if travel to Syria proved too difficult.
(Anwar al-Awlaki was a US citizen who fled to Yemen and together with his teenage son were killed by US drone strikes. Talk of the chickens coming home ... )

 

[robert99]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/nyregion/ahmad-khan-rahami-bombing.html
Mr. Rahami’s father said that he had been worried for some time about the direction his son was heading, well before he spoke to federal agents.

He described his son’s internet activities as “a disease,” akin to an addiction.

After the 2014 domestic dispute, he said, he visited his son in jail.

Ahmad asked for his forgiveness, but the father said he would not forgive him until he was sure he was not a terrorist and the F.B.I. had cleared him.

“In two months, the F.B.I. came back to me and said he’s clean,” Mohammad Rahami said. “They didn’t find anything on him. But they didn’t interview him.”

“I still had my doubts,” he said. “I was never 100 percent clear.”

 

[robert99]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/n...lass-clown-to-suspect-in-chelsea-bombing.html
In many ways, Ahmad’s story is similar to those of the perpetrators of other recent terrorist attacks in the United States and Europe: a disaffected first-generation immigrant, straddling two worlds and unable to fit into either; a young man who had not yet found a meaningful path in life, easily recruited into a cause that promised divine rewards. It is particularly similar to the life of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the popular, outgoing high school student sentenced to death a few years after graduation for his role in the 2013 bombing of the Boston Marathon.
...
So when Ahmad went to Pakistan the last time, in April 2013, he was already dabbling in extremism. Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province and a haven for Taliban leaders and other extremists, would have made it easy for him to be drawn in deeper. The irony was clear: As a young teenager, he had hated the Taliban and Pakistan. And now he embraced them, even though a relative had been killed by the Taliban in Afghanistan around this time, the friend of 15 years said.

His close relative in Afghanistan said Ahmad fell under the spell of a man named Mullah Qudri, whom he met through friends in California. “This Mullah Qudri has brainwashed Ahmad,” the relative said, adding that Mullah Qudri was even spending nights with Ahmad at the house where he was staying in Quetta.
(This Mullah Qadri? Toronto-area mullah catapults onto Pakistan's stage
"Mr. Qadri, who denies any link to the military or foreign powers, comes from the mystical and gentle Sufi branch of Islam. Perhaps most notably, he published a 400-page tract against terrorism and suicide bombing two years ago while in Canada, where he has lived since 2006 and became a Canadian citizen. The U.S. government praised his fatwa against terrorism as a “very important step” in “taking back Islam” from al-Qaeda and other extremist groups.")

 

[robert99]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/01/n...re-identified-as-airline-security-guards.html
Two men who found a travel bag containing a bomb on a Manhattan street last month — and then walked off with the bag but left the bomb — were not just employees of EgyptAir but in-flight security officers for the carrier, two officials at the airline said on Friday.

Surveillance footage showed two men finding the bag on West 27th Street on the evening of Sept. 17, soon after a bomb exploded on West 23rd Street, injuring 31 people and triggering terrorism fears across the region.

In the video, the men were seen pulling from the travel bag a white plastic bag that contained a pressure cooker connected to wires and a mobile phone. They left the white bag on the sidewalk and walked away with the travel bag. The bomb did not explode, and investigators have said that the men may have inadvertently disabled the device.

The two men, identified as Hassan Ali and Abou Bakr Radwan, had flown to New York from here, serving as unarmed security guards on the flight, the officials said.

The bag they found contained one of several homemade bombs that prosecutors say were planted that day in New York and New Jersey by Ahmad Khan Rahami, an Afghan-born American citizen.
(sometimes you don't know how lucky you are)

 

[robert99]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/n...lty-in-shootout-with-new-jersey-officers.html
More than three weeks after the bombings in New York City and at the Jersey Shore, the man accused in the attacks pleaded not guilty on Thursday to charges relating to the attempted murder of police officers.

The man, Ahmad Khan Rahami, who appeared in Superior Court here via video conference from his bed at University Hospital in Newark, said little, generally giving one-word answers to questions. Mr. Rahami, 28, has been in the hospital recovering from gunshot wounds since his capture on Sept. 19 in Linden, N.J.

It was the public’s first glimpse of Mr. Rahami since he was loaded into an ambulance after a shootout with officers that ended a search for the person responsible for planting bombs here, in Seaside Park, N.J., and in Manhattan.