Ahmad Khan Rahami, the Afghan-American suspect in custody for the New York/New Jersey bombings, had spent nearly one full year in Pakistan till March 2014, raising questions if he had received training in militancy, specifically bomb-making techniques, while out there.
US law enforcement officials are trying to determine if Rahami became radicalized during his multiple visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan that included spending several weeks in Quetta, the Pakistani city known to be a hotbed of Taliban insurgency. More importantly, they want to know if Rahami acted alone or at the behest of a foreign terrorist group.
It also emerged that 28-year-old Rahami married a Pakistani woman during an earlier visit to that country in July 2011. Media accounts, citing official sources, said the woman left the US in recent days and came to be intercepted in the United Arab Emirates on Monday with investigators trying to find out if she was aware of her husband’s plans to plant bombs.
It was a timely tip from an Indian-American owner of a New Jersey bar that enabled the police to catch Rahami after a dramatic shootout on Monday. Harinder Bains, who had seen mugshots of the wanted man on CNN, was quick to recognize Rahami, who was found sleeping in the doorway of his bar with a hoodie pulled over his head.
Initially, Bains thought Rahami was a “drunk guy”. later, watching a CNN newscast on his laptop, Bains concluded he was the wanted man and called the police, who were there in a matter of minutes and took him into custody after a brief gun battle in which Rahami and two police officers were wounded.
When CNN anchor Anderson Cooper called Bains a hero, the man who came to the US from India 22 years ago and became an American citizen 10 years ago shrugged off, saying: “Cops are the real hero…When you see something you should say something.”
“Now that we have this suspect in custody, the investigation can focus on other aspects such as whether this individual acted alone, and what his motivations may have been,” New York Police Commissioner James O’Neill said.
Rahami became a naturalized US citizen in 2011. He first came in January 1995, several years after his father arrived seeking asylum, CNN reported, quoting an official who said Rahami was given a US passport in 2003, while a minor, and again in 2007 after he said he lost his first one.
Rahami’s frequent trips to Pakistan and his extended stay there in 2013-14 prompted former National Security Council official Richard Clark to tell ABC News: “If they spent more than a few days, it raises suspicions that while they were there, they will have been recruited by terrorist groups.”
Prior to the year-long visit beginning April 2014, Rahami had spent several weeks in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and Quetta in 2011, said to a law enforcement official who reviewed his travel and immigration record.