September 19, 2016

FBI: “No Indication” of a Terror Cell in the New York-Area Bombings

What we know about the bombs in New York and New Jersey.

Mike Balsamo/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Update, September 19, 1:42 p.m.: During a news conference with New York City and federal officials, William Sweeney, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York division, said there was “no indication that there’s a [terrorist] cell operating” in the New York area and had no information about Ahmad Khan Rahami’s “path to radicalization.” Sweeney and other officials said the investigation into potential links to ISIS or other terror groups was still ongoing. Sweeney also noted that no one was arrested after the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force stopped a car in Brooklyn that was “observed…at a location associated with Rahmani” on Sunday night.

Update, September 19, 1:27 p.m.: Chris Bollwage, the mayor of Elizabeth, New Jersey, said in a news conference that Ahmad Khan Rahmani had not been known to local police as a potential terrorist before this weekend’s bombing. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) also told CNN he did not believe Rahami had been on any terrorist watch list.

On Sunday evening, a backpack containing five pipe bombs was discovered in Elizabeth, New Jersey, near the tracks of the New Jersey Transit railroad. One of the bombs detonated early on Monday morning as police attempted to disarm it. It was the latest in a series of bombs discovered in the New York City region since Saturday, including a pressure cooker bomb that exploded in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood on Saturday night, injuring 29 people. Here’s what we know so far:

How the bombings unfolded. The first bombing took place in Seaside Park, New Jersey, on Saturday morning, when a pipe bomb exploded near the starting line of the “Semper Five” 5K race supporting the Marine Corps. On Saturday night, a pressure cooker device exploded on 23rd Street in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood, injuring 29 people. Police also discovered and removed a second bomb a few blocks away on 27th Street. Then, on Sunday night, two men reported finding a backpack with five pipe bombs in Elizabeth. Police attempted to disarm the devices using a bomb disposal robot but accidentally detonated one of the bombs. No one was injured in the explosion.

Police have captured the main suspect in the case. Police announced on Monday morning that they were seeking 28-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami, an Afghan-born American citizen. Rahmani was caught on surveillance video near the site of the explosion in Manhattan on Saturday and has also been linked to the bombing in Seaside Park.

Rahami was captured on Monday morning in Linden, New Jersey, following a shootout with police in which two officers were injured and Rahami was reportedly shot in the leg.

The FBI also detained five Afghan men in a car on New York’s Belt Parkway on Sunday night, according to media reports. The FBI has confirmed that it carried out a traffic stop, but did not confirm how many people it detained.

Police haven’t yet linked all the bombings together. While Rahami has been linked to the bombs in Manhattan and Seaside Park, authorities have not yet connected those bombings to the pipe bombs discovered in Elizabeth, according to the Washington Post. One of the devices exploded early on Monday morning while a police bomb-disposal robot was attempting to disarm it. No one was injured in the blast.

There’s still no direct connection to ISIS or other terrorist groups. After one of the devices exploded and injured 29 people in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood on Saturday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio said there was no indication that the bombing—along with the one in Seaside Park—was the work of ISIS or another terrorist group. But Cuomo said on Monday that he’s rethinking that assessment. “The evidence might suggest a foreign connection,” he said, according to Reuters.

But ISIS has not yet claimed that it inspired the attackers, as it often does in the hours after terrorist attacks in the West. The group quickly took credit on Saturday for inspiring that evening’s stabbing attack at a mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota, calling the perpetrator a “soldier” of ISIS.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate