“The FBI is asking for the public’s assistance in locating these two unknown individuals”.
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At a press conference earlier this week, Robert Boyce, the NYPD’s chief of detectives, said the men may have inadvertently pulled a wire and disabled the explosive.
“We have no reason to believe they are connected”. There are no criminal charges. “We really would look forward to talking to them and asking them what they thought as they were doing that”, Water said. The agency says the men were seen Saturday night removing the bomb that failed to explode from a piece of luggage, then leaving the device behind while taking the suitcase.
Rahami ordered citric acid, ball bearings and electronic igniters on eBay and had them delivered to a Perth Amboy, New Jersey, business where he worked until September 12, the court complaints said.
Rahami has been slammed with a slew of charges, including the usage of weapons of mass destruction, bombing and destruction of property.
Investigators used the cellphone connected to the device to link the bomb to 28-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami, a USA citizen of Afghan descent who is now charged in connection to planting bombs in NY as well as New Jersey.
Later that day, at 8:30 PM, a bomb detonated in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City.
Other evidence – including another cellphone that was used a timing mechanism – links Rahami to three pipe bombs that were taped together and placed inside a trash can along the route of a Marine Corps charity race in Seaside Park, New Jersey, on Saturday morning.
A federal defender is complaining that bombing suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami has not had access to a lawyer since he was arrested in New Jersey on Monday. New York’s mayor called the bombing that injured 29 people in the bustling Chelsea district “an act of terror”. The blast propelled the dumpster 100 feet and shattered windows 400 feet above the detonation. Twelve fingerprints recovered from the pressure cooker, duct tape, and triggering cell phone were matched to Rahami.
Rahami, in other parts of his journal, praised “Brother” Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader slain in a 2011 U.S. raid in Pakistan; Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Muslim cleric and leading al Qaeda propagandist who was killed in a 2011 U.S. drone strike in Yemen; and Nidal Hasan, the U.S. Army psychiatrist who shot dead 13 people and wounded 32 at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.
“The sounds of the bombs will be heard in the streets”, Rahami allegedly wrote. Gun shots to your police. “Death To Your OPPRESSION”, one message reads. “License plate readers showing a auto tied to Rahami’s residence entering Manhattan through the Lincoln Tunnel two hours before the explosion”.
Randall Jackson, a former federal prosecutor who worked on the case against the Times Square bomber and now is in private practice, said investigators are surely hoping Rahami will talk. At the time of that interview, Rahami was in jail following a family dispute in which he stabbed one of his relatives.
Rahami was also a fan of Islamist propaganda online, according to Licata.
In a statement, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said that it “conducted internal database reviews, interagency checks, and multiple interviews, none of which revealed ties to terrorism”.
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That link involved one of the cell phones that investigators said were shipped past year to a store in Perth Amboy near the address that Rahami provided as his home in a 2012 passport application.
