The FBI looked into New York bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami two years ago after his father expressed concerns his son might be a terrorist, law enforcement officials said on Tuesday.
But the father later told investigators he just meant his son was hanging out with the wrong crowd, the officials said.
In any case, the FBI checked its databases and found nothing connecting Rahami to terror groups, three law enforcement officials said. The FBI review, which included interviews with Rahami’s father, was closed in a matter of weeks after the bureau came up empty-handed.
The investigators also disclosed on Tuesday that when Rahami was captured, he had a notebook with him that contained extremist ramblings including references to Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric who was killed in a 2011 drone strike, and Nidal Hasan who went on a deadly shooting rampage in 2009 at Fort Hood, Texas.
The information emerged as the younger Rahami, 28, was being held on $5.2 million bail, charged with the attempted murder of police officers in the shootout that led to his capture on Monday.
The disclosure of the father’s contacts with the FBI raises questions about whether there was anything more law enforcement could have done at the time to determine whether Rahami had terrorist aspirations.
That issue arose after the Orlando massacre in June, when FBI Director James Comey said that agents had years earlier looked into the gunman, Omar Mateen, but did not find enough information to pursue charges or keep him under investigation.
In Rahami’s case, the law enforcement official said the FBI had opened up an “assessment,” the least intrusive form of an FBI inquiry. Justice Department guidelines restrict the types of actions agents may take; they cannot, for instance, record phone calls without obtaining a higher level of approval or developing more grounds for suspicion.
Rahami, a US citizen born in Afghanistan, remained hospitalized on Tuesday after surgery for a gunshot wound to his leg. He was captured in Linden, New Jersey, after he was discovered sleeping in the doorway of a bar.
His father told reporters on Tuesday that he called the FBI two years ago. But when asked whether he thought his son was a terrorist, the father said:
No. And the FBI, they know that.
The younger Rahami was not prosecuted in the stabbing; a grand jury declined to indict him.
The bombing investigation began when a pipe bomb blew up on Saturday morning in Seaside Park, New Jersey, before a charity race to benefit Marines. No one was injured. Then a shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bomb exploded on Saturday night in New York’s Chelsea section, wounding 29 people, none seriously. An unexploded pressure-cooker bomb was found blocks away.
Late on Sunday night, five explosive devices were discovered in a trash can at Elizabeth train station. Investigators have not publicly tied Rahami to those devices.
Rahami provided investigators with a wealth of clues that led to his arrest just 50 hours after the first explosion, including fingerprints and DNA at the scene of the Manhattan bombing and a clear surveillance-camera image of his face near the site of the blast, according to law enforcement officials.
Officials said they have no other suspects at large, but cautioned they are still investigating.
(This article has been edited for length.)
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