The alleged perpetrator of the attack in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York on September 17 seems to have been an isolated element, without connections to any extremist movement. FBI Director James Comey said so on Tuesday.
“At this time, we see no indication of a larger cell, or of a threat of another attack,” the federal police chief told the US Senate Homeland Security Committee.
The alleged perpetrator of the attack which left 29 slightly injured on Saturday, September 17 in Manhattan, aged 28, was arrested by police two days after the explosion. He was charged in particular with the use of weapons of mass destruction.
In addition to the New York bombing, he is also suspected of having planted four homemade bombs during that same weekend, two of which exploded.
Born in Afghanistan and naturalized American, he had returned several times to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The FBI investigated him in 2014, after being alerted by his father, but found no indication of radicalization or sympathies for extremism.
According to the director of the FBI, there is currently a slowdown in the opening of investigations in the United States for supposed links with the Islamic State group, even though there are still a total of a thousand cases pending. “I hope it will go down (…) but it hasn’t decreased yet,” he said.
On the other hand, he recalled, the number of Americans or American residents leaving to join ISIS in Syria or Iraq has dropped significantly.
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