NEW YORK _ A handwritten journal recovered from accused Chelsea bomber Ahmad Khan Rahami contained references to "Brother Osama bin Laden," and a vow that "the sounds of bombs will be heard in the streets," according a federal complaint filed Tuesday charging him in connection with the Saturday bombing.
Rahami faces four counts: use of weapons of mass destruction, bombing a place of public use, destruction of property by means of explosives, and use of a constructive device during and in furtherance of a crime of violence, according to a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan.
The journal was taken "from the person ... Ahmad Kahn Rahami" according to the complaint.
It includes references to American-born and Yemen-based cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a senior al-Qaida leader killed in a 2011 U.S. drone strike, according to the complaint, as well as Nidal Hasan, an army psychiatrist convicted in the fatal shootings of 13 people at a Fort Hood Texas military base in 2009.
The journal ends with "Gun shots to your police. Death To Your OPPRESSION."
Earlier Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Rahami's father contacted law enforcement two years ago and told them his son was a terrorist.
The father's claims prompted a review by federal agents, The New York Times reported, citing two senior law enforcement officials.
Information about the FBI's possible previous contact with Rahami came on the same day federal prosecutors filed multiple charges against him.
Outside the family's home in Elizabeth, N.J. on Tuesday, the suspect's father, Mohammad Rahami, said he was interviewed by the FBI about two years ago.
"My son's doing very bad, OK? But they check it ... it was OK ... not a terrorist," Mohammad Rahami said. "Now they say, 'He is a terrorist.'"
The father said his son had stabbed his brother and hit his mother, prompting him to go to the authorities.
The New York Times reported that police in New Jersey passed the information to the Joint Terrorism Task Force led by the FBI in Newark. Investigators interviewed the father, who then recanted, saying he made the comment out of anger at his son, according to the Times.
While Ahmad Khan Rahami is believed to have acted alone, investigators remain focused on making sure no one else was involved in the Chelsea bombing, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Tuesday morning.
"Was there anyone working with him? We just want to make sure there are no other associates of this man that could be a potential threat," Cuomo said in an interview on CNN.
Rahami, a U.S. citizen born in Afghanistan, was captured Monday in New Jersey after a running gun battle on rain-slicked streets that ended with both him and the police officer who first confronted him shot and wounded, authorities said.
"The investigation is active and ongoing and it is being investigated as an act of terror," U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said at an unrelated event in Lexington, Ky.
Investigators have so far found no solid links between Rahami, 28, of Elizabeth, N.J., and international terrorism or any domestic terror cells, but were searching through his activity in social media looking for possible co-conspirators.
"Right now, we don't have anybody else," New York City Police Commissioner James O'Neill told CNN late Tuesday morning.
The mother of Rahami's young daughter told Fox News that Rahami didn't like America and hated gays.
The woman, identified only as Maria, said she was Rahami's high school sweetheart and had not seen him in two years. Maria said Rahami didn't pay child support and would often rail against American culture, Fox News reported.
Rahami's wife, Asia Bibi Rahami, was questioned by American investigators in the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday as she sought to return to the United States from Pakistan, federal officials told ABC News.
Asia Bibi Rahami, who voluntarily submitted to an interview, had left the United States for Pakistan in June, one of the officials said, ABC News reported.
Citing a U.S. official, ABC News reported that Rahami's mother, Najiba Rahami, left the country for Turkey three weeks before the bombings and has not returned.
Authorities are working with officials in Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates to get access to the suspect's wife, the official told CNN.
On CNN, Cuomo said he did not know about Rahami's wife, saying, "There is something to learn in this case study. What radicalized Rahami? When should we have learned something from where he was? And when he came back he went through screenings, but should those screenings be improved? And the investigation is pursuing that course. We also want to find out what to me is even more urgent: Did he have an associate he was working with? Is there anyone else out there that could pose a danger?"
FBI Special Agent William Sweeney said Monday after the suspect's capture that investigators are now trying to "completely understand Rahami's social networks."
Citing sources, CBS News reported that investigators found a handwritten note and small notebook on Rahami that contained written rants, suggesting he consumed radical ideologies from terrorist groups.
Citing a law enforcement official, CNN reported the rants referenced the Boston Marathon bombings and the late Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-American imam who was a spokesman for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
Sources briefed on the investigation said Monday that Rahami traveled back and forth between Afghanistan and the United States in the past few years. The sources also said they have information indicating that he may have crossed into Pakistan from Afghanistan, but it was unknown whether he had any military training while in either country.
O'Neill said on "CBS This Morning" that the investigation ultimately will determine if Rahami had help and how much. "I think it's a good sign that we found him in a doorway," O'Neill said, referring to the location in Linden, N.J., where the suspect was found. "Hopefully, that means he had nowhere to go. That's a pretty good sign."
O'Neill told CBS he was pleased that law enforcement was able to identify and arrest Rahami so quickly. "I'm not surprised ... I know what we do to catch people.
"I think our intelligence is very good, but more important than that it's the level of cooperation we have with our federal partners, specifically the FBI," he said.
Investigators also continued pursuing whether additional explosive devices remain unaccounted for and whether others knew of the suspect's bombmaking or radicalization and didn't report it, said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y.
King, who has talked with FBI and New York Police Department officials with knowledge of the investigation, said Christmas lights were used as detonators on a second, unexploded bomb in Manhattan, as well as the detonated device in Seaside Park, N.J., earlier Saturday.
The bomb that malfunctioned Saturday, blocks north of where the first bomb went off in the Chelsea section of Manhattan, allowed investigators to recover a fingerprint and a mobile phone that they traced to Rahami, King said.
"The main connection was the bombs themselves," said King, chairman of the House counterterrorism subcommittee. "The bombs were very similar."
In an interview Monday night, Cuomo told CNN that only Rahami's fingerprints and DNA were found amid the explosives.
"The operating theory is that he was operating on his own," Cuomo said.
Prosecutors in Union County, N.J., charged Rahami, who most recently worked at his family's Elizabeth fried chicken restaurant, with multiple counts of attempted murder of a police officer and unlawful possession of a weapon. His bail was set at $5.2 million, and he is scheduled for his first court appearance on Sept. 28, prosecutors said.
Hours earlier, a Linden police officer approached Rahami in the doorway outside a bar and restaurant after responding to a call about a vagrant. When confronted, Rahami opened fire, police said, hitting the wounded officer in the bulletproof vest and engaging in a running gunfight with pursuing officers before getting shot multiple times.
His capture ended a rapid-fire manhunt that gained speed and urgency by the hour after the bomb he is suspected of planting in Chelsea exploded Saturday night, injuring 29 people and giving New Yorkers another unwelcome reminder of the city's ever-present status as the prime terrorism target in the United States.
Investigators also suspect that Rahami placed a package laden with explosives in a trash can discovered Sunday night near an Elizabeth train station. That device exploded early Monday as a police bomb squad robot attempted to disarm it. It was one of five such devices found near the train station, authorities said.
President Barack Obama, visiting New York City for the gathering of the United Nations General Assembly in Manhattan, praised the "tough" and "resilient" response of the people of New York and New Jersey and offered them up as an example of how Americans should respond.
"Folks around here, they don't get scared," Obama said. "They go about their business every single day. That's the kind of strength that makes me so proud to be an American."
Investigators had a strong indicator of who the prime suspect was just a day after the bombings because surveillance video captured images of the same man at the 23rd Street location in Chelsea and the area on West 27th Street where State Police found the unexploded device.
The hunt picked up speed late Sunday night after FBI agents and investigators with the NYPD stopped a "vehicle of interest" on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn in connection with the Chelsea bombing.
Investigators took five people into custody for questioning at an FBI facility in lower Manhattan and released them Monday without charges filed, officials said. Two of them were members of Rahami's family, a brother and a sister, King said.
"They were family members who left the house last night," King said. "They gave very significant information to the FBI."
On Sunday night, people in the metro area went to bed as news broke about the Brooklyn traffic stop. They awoke Monday morning to learn that the bomb near the Elizabeth train station had exploded at about 12:30 a.m.
A Linden police officer came upon Rahami 10 hours later in the doorway outside Merdie's, a bar and restaurant, after responding to a call about a vagrant sleeping there, said Linden Police Capt. James Sarnicki.
Rahami shot and wounded an officer and was shot himself after a chase, Sarnicki said, adding that the suspect was shot in a leg and arm.
Rahami, who had been turned over to FBI custody, underwent surgery, officials said, but his condition was not known Monday night.
The link that authorities said identified him as the possible bomber was partly a byproduct of his own handiwork.
Three of the bombs had one component in common: a flip-style cellphone, a federal official said, adding that the pipe bomb that exploded in Seaside Park was constructed with a threaded pipe and black powder. The official said the two devices found in New York City included pressure cookers, similar to the devices used in the 2013 attack at the Boston Marathon that killed three and wounded hundreds more.
Despite collecting what they have said is DNA and fingerprints of Rahami from the exploded bomb fragments, the physical evidence is just a piece of the wider investigation. Federal and local law enforcement still are searching for a motive. They are hoping the justification for the bombings can be found by poring over Rahami's various associations, investigators said.
Among the many unanswered questions, King said: Was Rahami on the terrorist watch list? Was the Chelsea bombing a decoy for an attack on the United Nations General Assembly meetings? Also, King said, what possible affiliations could the suspect have in Afghanistan, where the Islamic State group does not have a strong presence?
Meanwhile, just two days after the bombings, Manhattan residents and those with business in the city tried to take the advice of Cuomo, Mayor Bill de Blasio and others to move on with their lives as investigators continue their efforts. Easier said than done, said Jose "Danny" Collador, 51, of New Jersey as he dined inside the Malibu diner, just two doors down from where the Chelsea device blew up in a garbage bin.
"I am happy, but I hope business will get better. It's not easy when you have to close your business," he said.
Shalev Katzav, 32, owner of Wrapido, a falafel stand, said the weekend's terror explosion "can happen anywhere."
Katzav said he came to New York from northern Israel to get away "from the war and fighting." His experience with terror in the Middle East is emotionally draining, Katzav said, and the weekend bombing "brought back those feelings."
