Investigators are inspecting the scene of Saturday’s Chelsea explosion. KEYSTONE / FR103966 AP / JASON DECROW sda-ats
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–This content was published on September 19, 2016 – 22:47
(Keystone-ATS)
The American police arrested Monday the main suspect of attacks in the New York area this weekend. This is an Afghan American who was injured in the shooting at the time of his arrest. Two police officers were also hit.
Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28, residing near New York, in Elizabeth, was arrested in Linden, a nearby town. Earlier today in the day, the FBI had issued a wanted notice in his name.
The man is suspected both for the explosion on Saturday night in the bustling Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, which left 29 people injured, and for the homemade bomb placed on the route of a running race organized by the US Marines Saturday morning at Seaside Park, a coastal town in New Jersey. This bomb caused no casualties, the start of the race having been delayed.
All the ingredients of a terrorist act
“We now have every reason to believe that the attack,” which left 29 injured, was “an act of terrorism,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said after the arrest. He said “no other individual was wanted” for the New York attack. An FBI agent claimed to have at this stage “no information” about an “operational” terrorist cell.
Little information has filtered so far on his past or his motivations, even if the hypothesis of an Islamist inspiration has continued to gain ground. Elizabeth Mayor Chris Bollwage stressed that he was “not on the radar” of the local police, but that his family had been in trouble with the town hall over a story of the opening hours of the family restaurant.
In addition to the two bombs that exploded, another was found in Chelsea, and half a dozen explosive devices were discovered in Elizabeth Station. Elizabeth and Linden are about 30 kilometers by road southwest of Manhattan and an hour by car north of Seaside Park.
No connection with Minnesota
According to President Barack Obama, however, no link has been established between these attacks and the knife attack, also committed Saturday, but 2000 km from New York, in a shopping center in Minnesota.
Extremists “try to hurt innocent people but they also try to scare us all. And to change the way we live to undermine our values. So even though we have to be vigilant and offensive to prevent these senseless acts and make sure to find their authors to judge them, we all have a role to play in order not to succumb to fear, ”added the American president.
Unpublished since September 11
In the attack on the small town of St. Cloud, Minnesota, a Somali student stabbed nine people before being shot dead. It was claimed on Sunday by the Islamic State group – the only claim registered at this point for the events of the weekend.
This information makes the thesis of multiple Islamist attacks more and more credible – which would be a first in the United States since the attacks of September 11, 2001, which killed nearly 3,000 people. “This is probably the first major terrorist attack since September 11,” said former New York police chief Bill Bratton on NBC.
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