New York bomb suspect acted alone, says FBI

The suspect in the bombing in New York’s Chelsea neighbourhood this month appears to have acted on his own, with no connection to an extremist movement, the FBI has said.

“We see so far no indication of a larger cell or the threat of related attacks,” FBI director James Comey testified at a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday.

The suspect in the September 17 bombing that left 31 people wounded, Ahmad Khan Rahami, was arrested in New Jersey two days after the attack.

He was wounded in a shootout with police as they closed in on him. He has remained hospitalised and is unable to appear before a judge, according to the New Jersey prosecutor’s office.

US prosecutors, in a 13-page indictment on September 20, slapped him with four charges, including use of weapons of mass destruction.

In addition to the New York attack, he is charged with a pipe bombing, also on September 17, in Seaside Park, New Jersey, and planting several other bombs.

A naturalised US citizen born in Afghanistan, Rahami, 28, made several trips in recent years to Afghanistan and Pakistan. The terror charges came after the Federal Bureau of Investigation admitted it had investigated Rahami for terrorism in 2014 following a complaint from his father, but found no link to radicalisation or extremist sympathies. Dad of Muslim ‘clock boy’ sues conservative media

The father of Ahmed Mohamed, the Muslim teenager arrested in Texas last year when he brought a homemade clock to school, has launched a defamation lawsuit against several conservative media figures and organisations. Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed filed the suit last week in Dallas County on behalf of his son, whose detention and questioning last September made international headlines.