The father, Mohamed Rahami, said in an interview published on ABC’s website yesterday that his wife, Najiba, and another of his sons, Qassim, were in Dubai when they were pulled from a flight and questioned for 16 hours by authorities there.
Authorities then sent them to Kabul, he said.
“Why send my son back to Afghanistan? He is a US citizen. You have any questions? Bring him home, [don’t] send him to a different country,” Mohamed Rahami said of Qassim.
Reuters could not immediately confirm that the two were being held.
Ahmad Rahami, a 28-year-old naturalised US citizen, emigrated from Afghanistan with his family at the age of 7. They settled in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and opened a fried chicken restaurant.
Rahami faces federal charges in the bombing this month that injured 31 people in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighbourhood, and in connection with explosives found at locations in New Jersey. No one was killed in the blasts.
Rahami has been held in a Newark, New Jersey, hospital since his arrest last week with wounds after a shootout with police.
Investigators have probed Rahami’s history of travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan. He was motivated by militant Islamist views, prosecutors say, citing a journal he carried when he was captured in which he begged for martyrdom and expressed outrage at what he called the US slaughter of Muslim fighters.
The American Civil Liberties Union said on Monday it will temporarily provide legal counsel to Rahami, as concern grew over his lack of access to a lawyer. Authorities say Rahami is not physically able to appear in court, and he has not.
The United States is likely to face a higher risk of Islamic State-inspired attacks over the next two years as the group loses land in the Middle East, a top official with the Federal Bureau of Investigation said yesterday.
“I’m fairly convinced that 2017 and 2018 in the homeland will be more dangerous than we’ve seen before, because as we shrink ISIS, they’ll lash out,” Michael Steinbach, executive assistant director of the FBI’s national security branch, told a security conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Islamic State proclaimed a caliphate over parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014 but has lost a significant amount of territory since then to US-backed offensives, though it still controls oil wells on Syrian land.
Steinbach was quick to say that the fact that additional attacks might be planned did not mean they would be successful. He noted that US security officials disrupted some 70 Islamic State-inspired planned attacks in 2015 alone.
The US has seen a spate of attacks inspired by the militant group, which has been fighting a long civil war in Syria. They include the June massacre of 49 people at an Orlando nightclub and the killing of 14 people at a San Bernardino, California, social services agency last December.
Steinbach also noted that militant attacks remain rare in the United States, saying that 19 people were killed in the United States and 21 Americans killed overseas in attacks considered terrorism in 2015.
“There is no expectation that we will stop every homicide here in Boston or Chicago,” he said. “For some reason, with terrorism, there is an expectation, a bar that is set at zero and every single attack that goes through is considered a failure.”
A would-be Islamic State recruit from California was sentenced on Monday to 30 years in prison for his conviction on charges he sought to join the militant group in Syria and committed bank fraud to pay for a plane ticket there, federal prosecutors said.
Nader Elhuzayel, 25, was found guilty in June by a US district jury in Santa Ana, California, of conspiring and attempting to provide material support, namely himself, to a terrorist organization, and 26 counts of bank fraud.
He became the first person tried, convicted and sentenced for such charges in federal court, the US attorney’s Office in Los Angeles said. More than 70 individuals have been charged in the United States with trying to travel abroad to enlist with Islamic State, with most cases resulting in guilty pleas.
A native-born US citizen, Elhuzayel worked various odd jobs after graduating from high school, took a course in medical billing and attended community college for several semesters, according to a pre-sentencing memorandum.
Elhuzayel was arrested on May 21, 2015, when he tried to board a Turkish Airlines plane at Los Angeles International Airport for a flight to Turkey, from where he had planned to make his way to the Syrian border, federal prosecutors said.
Found in his carry-on bag was a computer storage drive containing graphic photos of Islamic State beheadings and a “hit list” of US defence department employee names and addresses compiled by the extremist group, according to evidence presented at trial.
Weeks earlier, prosecutors said, Elhuzayel had posted Twitter messages professing support for a 2015 incident in Texas in which two gunmen were shot to death by police.
Elhuzayel also appeared in a video swearing allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and pledging to enlist as a fighter in the militant group, which has seized swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria and claimed responsibility for numerous attacks on civilians in Europe.
Prosecutors said Elhuzayel and a co-defendant, Muhanad Badawi, repeatedly used social media to express their support for Islamic State, including its execution of gay men. One Twitter message posted by Elhuzayel declared: “The only thing more beautiful than rain is homosexuals being thrown off tall buildings.”
Badawi was convicted in a joint trial with Elhuzayel of conspiring with him to support terrorism, aiding and abetting his efforts by purchasing his one-way plane ticket, and a single count of financial aid fraud in connection with the plot.
He is scheduled to be sentenced on October 17, and faces up to 15 years in prison for each count relating to providing support for terrorism.
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