Bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami is now facing federal as well as state charges in connection with bombings in NY and New Jersey and a shootout with police.
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Rahami’s wife voluntarily met with USA law enforcement officials while in the United Arab Emirates and voluntarily gave a statement, a law enforcement official said. USA investigators are trying to get permission to speak with her. Prosecutors have charged him with planting a bomb in Seaside Park, which injured no one, and two in Manhattan.
Police stress they want to interview the men as potential witnesses, not as suspects. He is now recovering at University Hospital from gunshot wounds sustained during his arrest, where he has reportedly refused to answer questions from federal agents.
In an interview conducted in his native language with the New York Times, Mohammad Rahami says he told the Federal Bureau of Investigation back in 2014 that his son was “fascinated” with jihadist propaganda, including music, video and poetry.
After his arrest, federal authorities admitted that they had looked into Mr Rahami in 2014, when his father expressed concern after a domestic dispute involving his son.
The NYPD tweeted Monday morning that authorities were seeking Ahmad Khan Rahami.
Investigators wish to speak with the men and recover the luggage that they took.
“I condemn the act of my son and I am sad over injuries caused to people”, he said, adding that he was cooperating fully with investigators.
Mohammad Rahami, his father, made the terrorist claim during a domestic quarrel in which Ahmad Rahami was allegedly brandishing a knife in a confrontation with a brother, according to the official.
She said Rahami reached out to them one time in the a year ago. Rahami traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan and may have been radicalized there.
Two cell phones used in the bombs were shipped to a Perth Amboy, New Jersey, store located about 500 meters from a residence listed on Rahami’s 2012 passport application as home. Although the pressure cooker bomb that wounded over two dozen people on the stree.
Two men happened upon the suitcase and, after rummaging through it, removed the plastic-bag-wrapped pressure cooker and took the suitcase.
Investigators have been trying to determine if Rahami had any accomplices in the USA or any contact with militant groups overseas that might have trained him in bomb-making.
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Doctors have not cleared police to question him, according to an official.
