The Pakistani-origin wife of NY and New Jersey bombings suspect left the USA just days before the attacks and authorities are now working with Pakistani and UAE officials to get access to her, media reports said on Tuesday.
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The New York Times confirmed with USA federal officials that Rahami did indeed report his son as a potential terrorist.
New CCTV footage shows suspected NY bomber Ahmad Rahami walking down a Manhattan street wheeling a suitcase thought to contain explosives. The mother of another of his children, who gave her name as Maria, told Fox News she knew nothing of this and that she Rahami had met at school in New Jersey. The court set bail at $5,2 million. The Times quotes their sources as saying that the elder Rahami later said he had only reported his son “out of anger”.
The FBI acknowledged it had investigated Rahami in 2014, but found no “ties to terrorism” and dropped its inquiry.
“The FBI Newark office received information about this individual”. Federal Bureau of Investigation agents said they were stillworking “to make sure we completely understand Rahami’s social network”, William Sweeney Jnr, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s NY division, said.
The Times also reported that police found a notebook after the shootout on Monday. I said, ‘OK.’ Now they say he is a terrorist.
Authorities said Rahami is “directly linked” to bombings on Saturday in New York City and Seaside Park, New Jersey, and he is believed to be connected to pipe bombs found in a backpack Sunday night in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He has been charged on five counts of attempted murder of a law enforcement officer and two unlawful weapons counts.
Linden police officers Angel Padilla and Peter Hammer were injured during the shootout with Ahmad Khan Rahami on Monday.
Friends and neighbors of Rahami’s told The Washington Post and The New York Times that Rahami seemed to have become more religious after his trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan, but USA authorities have suggested that Khan was not suspected to have been radicalized overseas. These sources say she was pregnant at the time and that he was told she could not enter the United States until after the baby was born, which is what happened.
Police also discovered an unexploded pressure-cooker bomb on West 27th Street in Manhattan on Saturday night, just four blocks north of where the first Manhattan blast occurred. Investigators say Rahami used the online auction site eBay to purchase numerous bomb components, including chemicals found in improvised explosives – like citric acid – circuit boards, and triggering devices.
Among them: his fingerprints and DNA evidence at the scene of the Manhattan bombing, his uncovered face clearly captured by surveillance cameras and other evidence.
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Investigators are said to believe that more people were involved in the bombing plots.
