NEW YORK -- Ahmad Khan Rahami vowed to martyr himself rather than be caught after setting off explosives in New York and New Jersey, according to federal terrorism charges filed against him Tuesday.
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Criminal complaints in Manhattan and New Jersey federal courts provided descriptions of what authorities say drove the Afghan-born U.S. citizen to set off the explosives, including a bomb that injured more than two dozen people when it blew up on a busy Manhattan street.
Meanwhile, more details emerged Tuesday about Rahami's past, including the disclosure that the FBI had investigated him in 2014 but came up with nothing.
According to the court complaints, Rahami's journal included a passage that accused the U.S. government of slaughtering Muslim holy warriors in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.
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"Inshallah [God willing] the sounds of the bombs will be heard in the streets. Gun shots to your police. Death to your OPPRESSION," the journal ended.
One portion expressed concern at the prospect of being caught before being able to carry out a suicide attack and the desire to be a martyr, the complaints said. Authorities said some of the journal was unintelligible because it was damaged in gunfire when Rahami, 28, initiated a shootout that led to his capture Monday outside a bar in Linden, N.J. Initially charged with attempted murder of police officers, he was held in lieu of $5.2 million bond.
Rahami remains hospitalized with gunshot wounds.
The court complaints describe Rahami buying bomb-making equipment so openly between June and August that he ordered citric acid, ball bearings and electronic igniters on eBay and had them delivered to a Perth Amboy, N.J., business where he worked until earlier this month.
San Jose, Calif.-based eBay Inc. noted that the products are legal and widely available, and said the company had worked with law enforcement on the investigation.
In 2014, the FBI opened an "assessment," the least intrusive form of an FBI inquiry, based on comments from his father after a domestic dispute, the bureau said in a statement.
"The FBI conducted internal database reviews, interagency checks and multiple interviews, none of which revealed ties to terrorism," the FBI said.
A law enforcement official said the FBI spoke with Rahami's father in 2014 after agents learned of his concerns that his son could be a terrorist.
Rahami's father told reporters Tuesday outside the family's fried-chicken restaurant in Elizabeth, N.J., that he called the FBI at the time because Rahami "was doing real bad," having stabbed his brother and hit his mother.
Rahami was not prosecuted in the stabbing; a grand jury declined to indict him.
"But they checked, almost two months, and they say, 'He's OK, he's clear, he's not terrorist.' Now they say he's a terrorist," the father, Mohammad Rahami, said.
Asked whether he thought his son was a terrorist, he said: "No. And the FBI, they know that."
Information for this article was contributed by Tom Hays, Michael Balsamo, Michael Catalini, Dake Kang, Josh Cornfield, Alicia A. Caldwell, Kevin Freking and Deb Riechmann of The Associated Press; and by Ellen Nakashima, Mark Berman and William Wan of The Washington Post.
A Section on 09/21/2016