The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is asking the public for help in locating two men who allegedly found a piece of luggage on a NY sidewalk that contained an explosive device that may be tied to the suspect in Saturday’s bombings in NY and New Jersey.
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Security camera footage shows the men taking a piece of luggage from the sidewalk, removing an improvised explosive device from it, and then leaving the device behind but taking the luggage, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Prosecutors say Rahami succeeded in setting off two explosions, one Saturday morning in Seaside Park, New Jersey, and another 11 hours later on 23rd Street in Chelsea, a bomb that injured 31 people.
“The FBI is interested in speaking to these individuals and recovering the luggage”, the FBI says.
Police have earlier said they did not believe the men were related to the plot.
Law enforcement officials said Rahami’s wife has returned to the United States after giving a statement to a USA embassy in the United Arab Emirates. They say he wrote a journal that praised Osama bin Laden and other Muslim extremists, fumed about what he saw as the US government’s killing of Muslim holy warriors and declared “death to your oppression”.
Pakistan’s foreign office offered new details Thursday about the background of Ahmad Khan Rahami, an Afghan-born USA citizen who is charged with setting off homemade bombs in NY and New Jersey last weekend.
There also were laudatory references to Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki – the American-born Muslim cleric who was killed in a 2011 drone strike and whose preaching has inspired other acts of violence – and Nidal Hasan, the former army officer who went on a deadly shooting rampage in 2009 at Fort Hood, Texas, the complaint said.
Ahmad Rahami is still believed to be in a New Jersey hospital, where he was taken after being shot by police Monday. A second pressure cooker bomb left in Manhattan did not explode and is the subject of the latest public plea.
The appeal comes a day after federal authorities charged Ahmad Rahami, the lone suspect in the weekend bombing campaign in NY and New Jersey, with four federal terror-related counts, including the use of a weapon of mass destruction.
He will be transported to Manhattan to face the charges, said federal prosecutors in NY.
The federal charging documents say Rahami had been buying components online for months, shipping them all to his workplace, NPR’s Dina Temple-Raston told All Things Considered.
The FBI said Rahami was arrested by police in New Jersey and remained in the custody of that state, not the federal government.
“Death to your oppression”, a final message read.
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Federal investigators were probing Rahami’s history of travel to Afghanistan and Pakistan, and looking for any evidence that he may have been radicalized or trained in bomb-making on those trips.
