Live
Audio Only
Federal prosecutors Tuesday charged the man arrested after weekend bombings in New York and New Jersey with four counts, including use of weapons of mass destruction and bombing a place of public use.
RELATED:
The Trump Effect? A Most Violent Year in the US for Muslims
The charges were laid out in a federal complaint against Ahmad Khan Rahami, a naturalized U.S. citizen captured Monday in New Jersey after a shootout with police.
Several groups and organizations representing the Muslim community in the U.S. have expressed their opposition to the attacks and its suspected perpetrator, while also warning that the community would become yet again the target of hate crimes, Islamophobic attacks as well as further profiling by law enforcement agencies and the FBI.
“American Muslims, like all Americans reject extremism and violence, and seek a safe and secure nation,” the Council on American-Muslim Relations, the largest Muslim group in the U.S., said in a statement Monday after the arrest of the suspect.
“Our nation is most secure when we remain united and reject the fear mongering and guilt by association often utilized following such attacks.”
In several cases of bomb attacks in the U.S., including those carried out by white suspects, the attackers were charged with using weapons of mass destruction. Attackers in both the 2013 Boston Marathon and the Oklahoma City bombings received that same charge.
Federal law defines "weapons of mass destruction" as "any weapon that is designed or intended to cause death or serious bodily injury through the release, dissemination, or impact of toxic or poisonous chemicals, or their precursors."
The federal charges come after the father of Rahami said he had reported concerns about his son being involved with militants to the FBI two years ago.
The FBI acknowledged it had investigated Rahami in 2014, but found no "ties to terrorism" and dropped its inquiry.
Rahami, 28, was suspected in the weekend bombings, including a blast Saturday night in New York City's Chelsea neighborhood that wounded 29 people, and another on the New Jersey shore that injured no one earlier that day.
Rahami allegedly praised Osama bin Laden and accused the U.S. government of slaughtering Islamic fighters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Palestine in a handwritten letter, according to the federal charges.
Rahami was arrested Monday in Linden, New Jersey, after a shootout with police that left him with multiple gunshot wounds. He has been in the hospital since and is in a stable but critical condition.
Despite bringing charges already, police had not yet been able to interview him in depth, New York Police Department Commissioner James O'Neill said.
Meanwhile, two U.S. officials told Reuters Rahami had traveled to Afghanistan and to Quetta, Pakistan, a city where support for the Taliban is significant.
The officials, and other U.S. security sources, said Rahami underwent additional security screening upon returning from abroad but passed each time. His wife left the U.S. a few days before the bombings, CNN reported, citing a law enforcement source.
The news comes amid the 2016 presidential elections in the U.S. in which Republican nominee Donald Trump has been using Islamophobic and racist rhetoric to gain support with such proposals as a ban on all Muslims entering the U.S. Thus many expect him to capitalize on the recent attacks to gain momentum against his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
Newsletter
