NEW YORK — The man who authorities say set off powerful bombs in Manhattan and on the Jersey Shore over the weekend planned the attacks for months, conducted a dry run days before his assault, and took inspiration from Osama bin Laden and other international terrorists, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court Tuesday.
The man, Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, was charged with several crimes, including use of weapons of mass destruction and bombing a place of public use, and the criminal complaint against him outlines how close the attacks came to causing death and even more destruction.
According to the complaint, the bomb in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood Saturday night was powerful enough to vault a dumpster around 120 feet through the air. Windows shattered 400 feet from where the explosion went off, and pieces of the bomb were recovered 650 feet away.
The complaint offers evidence that Rahami was motivated by an extremist Islamic ideology that he recorded in a notebook he had with him when he was shot and wounded by the police in Linden, N.J., Monday and then taken into custody.
Pierced by a bullet and splattered with blood, the journal contains screeds against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In one handwritten message, according to the complaint, Rahami pleads that he not be caught before carrying out his planned attacks.
“My heart I pray to the beautiful wise ALLAH,’’ he wrote. “To not take JIHAD away from. I beg.’’
In one section, Rahami writes of “killing the kuffar,’’ or unbelievers. Rahami also praises other terrorists, including Anwar al-Awlaki, Al Qaeda’s leading propagandist, who died in a drone strike in Yemen, as well as the soldier in the Fort Hood shooting, among the deadliest of the lone wolf attacks inspired by Al Qaeda.
The complaint also cites evidence of Rahami’s preparations for the attacks, with some of the equipment he used bought on eBay. Two days before the bombing in Chelsea, according to the complaint, he recorded video of himself igniting an incendiary device in the backyard of his home in Elizabeth, N.J.
The lighting of a fuse, the complaint says, is followed by “billowing smoke and laughter,’’ before Rahami is seen entering the frame and picking up the device.
As detailed as it is, the complaint leaves unanswered questions about when Rahami began to feel deep antipathy for the country he had lived in for years and where he had become a naturalized citizen.
Federal agents first became aware of Rahami two years ago, when his father shared with them his concerns that his son might be involved in terrorism.
The FBI, which had been notified about Rahami by the local police after a domestic dispute involving the family, said in a statement that it checked its databases, contacted other agencies, and conducted interviews. But the agency’s review did not turn up anything that warranted further inquiry, and the review was closed.
In some of the most high-profile terrorism-related cases in recent years — in Orlando; San Bernardino, Calif.; and Boston — federal authorities had looked into a suspect’s life long before they launched their assaults.
Investigators were still working to determine if Rahami had any outside assistance, if anyone knew of his plot and if he was aided in constructing the bombs.
Among those Rahami praises in his notebook, according the complaint, is Awlaki, who remains a powerful influence on would-be jihadis, especially in the English-speaking West. Among Awlaki’s documented admirers were Syed Rizwan Farook, who along with his wife killed 14 people in San Bernardino; Omar Mateen, who fatally shot 49 people in an Orlando nightclub; and Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who staged an attack at the finish line of the Boston Marathon with pressure-cooker bombs in 2013.
Authorities are scrutinizing a number of trips Rahami made overseas, particularly several to Pakistan. In May 2011, he made a three-month trip to Quetta, according to law enforcement officials, citing Customs and Border Protection records. Then, in April 2013, he made another trip to Quetta and did not return until March 2014, according to information provided to federal customs authorities by New York City police.
His wife, who left the country days before the bombing, is in the United Arab Emirates, where she provided a statement to the FBI, according to officials. Authorities are working to bring her back into the country as soon as possible.
In August 2014, Rahami got into a fight with his family, during which he stabbed his brother in the leg with a knife, according to court records.
Police arrived to investigate, and it was at this time that Rahami’s father told them about his concerns about his son’s possible involvement in terrorism. The information was passed to the Joint Terrorism Task Force led by the FBI in Newark. Officers opened what is known as an assessment, the most basic of FBI investigations, and interviewed the father multiple times.
They never interviewed the son, who was in jail at the time, according to the official.
The father, Mohammad Rahami, in a brief interview, said that at the time he told agents from the FBI about his concerns his son was going through a difficult period.
“Two years ago I go to the FBI because my son was doing really bad, OK?’’ he said. “But they check almost two months, they say, ‘He’s OK, he’s clean, he’s not a terrorist.’ I say OK.’’
He added: “Now they say he is a terrorist. I say OK.’’
