The father of the New York bomber alerted federal law enforcement about his son being a “terrorist” back in 2014, the New York Times reports. Mohammad Rahami, the father of Ahmad Khan Rahami, told police his son was a terrorist after the younger Rahami was arrested following a domestic dispute with his brother.
Here’s more from the Times:
The father made the statement about his son being a terrorist to New Jersey police in 2014, when Mr. Rahami was arrested after a domestic dispute and accused of stabbing his brother. The information was passed to the Joint Terrorism Task Force led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Newark. Officers opened what is known as an assessment, the most basic of F.B.I. investigations, and interviewed the father, who then recanted. An official, when asked about the inquiry, said the father made the comment out of anger at his son. It is not clear if officers interviewed Ahmad Rahami. On Tuesday morning, outside the family’s restaurant in Elizabeth, the father, Mohammad Rahami, told reporters, “I called the F.B.I. two years ago,” he said, shaking his fingers in the air. Asked if he specifically meant his son, Mr. Rahami stormed away. A short time later, he responded to a reporter who asked, “Do you think your son is a terrorist?” “No,” Mohammad Rahami said. “And the F.B.I., they know that.”
Police arrested Ahmad Rahami in New Jersey on Monday after a manhunt for the 28-year-old Afghanistan-born naturalized citizen. Rahami is accused of planting multiple bombs in New York and New Jersey, two of which exploded on Saturday. As the Times also reports, after the shootout with police that ended with his arrest on Monday, Rahami was found to have a notebook on his person that contained writings about killing unbelievers and other ideas about radical Islamic jihad.
