NEW YORK: The father of Ahmad Khan Rahami, the man suspected of planting bombs in New York and New Jersey, told media personnel outside his restaurant on Tuesday that he had informed the FBI twice about his son’s reported radicalisation about two years ago.

“Two years ago, I go to the FBI because my son was doing really bad, OK?” he said.

“But they check [for] 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.”

A US official told reporters that Rahami was a naturalised American citizen who made at least three months-long trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan since 2014.

He is married to a Pakistani woman and brought her to the US as his wife, said the official.

Rahami’s wife left the US for Pakistan in recent days and was intercepted by officials on Monday in the United Arab Emirates, where investigators were attempting to determine whether she had been aware of her husband’s plans.

Rahami was charged on Monday evening with five counts of attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, according to the Union County, New Jersey, prosecutor. He was arrested after he wounded two police officers before he was shot and captured in Linden, N.J., where he had been spotted sleeping in the vestibule of a closed bar.

The injured suspect was wheeled away on a stretcher under heavy security, ending a 50-hour manhunt that followed two explosions in which, almost miraculously, no one was killed.

The law enforcement officials want to ascertain Rahami’s motive. Was he working alone? Why did he make lengthy trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan?

These are among the key questions that have emerged in the wake of capture of the man suspected of planting bombs in New York and New Jersey over the weekend.

Published in Dawn September 21st, 2016