Monday, September 26, 2016

TERROR AT HOME - New York, New Jersey

"Bombing suspect arrested, but New York security still elevated" PBS NewsHour 9/19/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Following a shootout, New York police apprehended their suspect for Saturday's actual and attempted bombings in New York and New Jersey.  Twenty-eight-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Afghanistan, was seized after being recognized sleeping in the doorway of a New Jersey bar.  Earlier in the day, a text message alert urged New Yorkers to call 911 if they saw him.

GWEN IFILL (NewsHour):  They say they've got their man.  Now they're trying to figure out his motive.  An arrest this morning in New Jersey has ended a manhunt in a series of bombings and attempted bombings around New York City and New Jersey.

MAN:  That's definitely him.

GWEN IFILL:  Ahmad Khan Rahami was loaded into an ambulance, bloody and dazed after a gun battle with police.  The 28-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen from Afghanistan was captured in Linden, New Jersey, after he was recognized sleeping in the doorway of a bar.

That was just hours after police sent text alerts to millions in the New York metro area to be on the lookout for him.  After the shoot-out, in which two police officers and the suspect were injured, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio firmly labeled the bombings terrorism.

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO, New York City:  We have so more much information obviously than we even had a few hours ago.  Based on the information we have now, we have every reason to believe this was an act of terror.

GWEN IFILL:  It all began on Saturday morning in a bomb attack in the beach town of Seaside Park, New Jersey, before a charity race to benefit Marines.  No one was injured there.

Later that night, in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, another bomb went off, injuring 29 people.  Surveillance video allegedly caught Rahami planting the device.  A second device, made from a pressure cooker filled with shrapnel, was found undetonated a few blocks away.

And last night, five more pipe bombs were found at a train station in Elizabeth, New Jersey.  As robots worked to dismantle them, one exploded suddenly.  Officials linked all of the attacks to Rahami, but offered limited details about how they made that connection.

But, with Rahami as a named suspect, police descended on his family home in Elizabeth.

MAN:  He's a very friendly guy.  That's what's so scary.  It's hard when it's home.  They never seemed out of the ordinary.  They were just Americanized.  You would have never known anything.



"The challenge of recognizing radicalization before it’s too late" PBS NewsHour 9/19/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  The suspect behind this weekend’s bombings has been apprehended; now authorities are trying to figure out what motivated him and whether he acted alone.  Judy Woodruff talks to George Washington University’s Lorenzo Vidino and former Department of Homeland Security official Juliette Kayyem about what the investigation has uncovered so far and how we can try to prevent future attacks.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Juliette, what do you make of the fact that we learned late this afternoon his family moved to the United States in 1995?  We figured he would have been 7 years old then.

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