The New York bomb suspect, Ahmad Rahami, was on Tuesday charged for the blasts in New York and New Jersey.
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A law enforcement official tells NPR that Rahami’s father, Mohammad R. Rahami, called New Jersey police over the dispute involving his son but later retracted his complaint.
Rahami, a naturalised United States citizen born in Afghanistan, was captured on Monday 19 September, after he was wounded in a gunfight in Linden, New Jersey.
For the New Jersey attacks, Rahami was charged with two counts of using and attempting to use weapons of mass destruction. At this point federal agents say the suspect has not been co-operating with the investigation. “As such, he is not in sufficient physical health for presentment to the Court – even at a bedside proceeding”, it said.
In the Manhattan federal court case, Magistrate Judge Gabriel W. Gorenstein ruled on Wednesday that since Rahami is technically not in federal custody, the court can not appoint him a federal public defender to handle the NY charges.
Mr Rahami has been charged in relation to the NY explosion and another device that exploded harmlessly hours earlier near a race in Seaside Park, New Jersey.
Investigators don’t believe the two men who handled the luggage are part of Rahami’s plot, but still want to question them. Investigators are attempting to identify two men who were spotted on a surveillance video purportedly taking a suitcase that held one of the bombs on New York’s 27th Street. Earlier in the week, NY police said they wanted to interview the men but did not regard them as suspects. He also allegedly wrote about wanting to die a martyr but that he was concerned he’d be caught before he could carry out a suicide attack.
The FBI also continued to search for two men who found a second, unexploded pressure-cooker device that prosecutors say Rahami left in a piece of luggage in Chelsea on Saturday night. Defense attorneys for the state of NY have requested his first hearing be today and that Rahami could participate via video conference from his hospital bed.
Rahami was charged Tuesday in federal court in both NY and New Jersey with using weapons of mass destruction and bombing a place of public use, in addition to other charges.
She had voluntarily met with US law enforcement authorities while in the United Arab Emirates this week and gave a statement.
Federal prosecutors said Rahami injured 31 people in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood with a homemade bomb on Saturday night in a case that investigators now regard as terrorism. The other official said investigators believe she left the USA for Pakistan in June.
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“I don’t like to think about what could have happened, but I’m just so blessed and glad it didn’t”, he said.
