Judge blocks Ahmad Khan Rahami from appearing in court on federal charges
New York bombing suspect still being held on state charges and authorities say wife is being questioned but is not a suspect
A Manhattan judge has refused a request by public defenders on behalf of suspected New York and New Jersey bomber Ahmad Khan Rahami to schedule his first court appearance to face federal charges.
Judge Gabriel W Gorenstein said on Wednesday night that while an arrested person must appear before the court without unnecessary delay, he agreed with government claims that Rahami was currently being held under state charges and did not yet need to appear in court.
Rahami, 28, remains in the hospital in Newark, New Jersey, recovering from injuries sustained in a shootout with police during his arrest on Monday. Public defenders had suggested he might make his first court appearance from his hospital bed.
But Gorenstein said there was no evidence to contradict government claims that he has not been arrested on federal charges, and is still being held on state charges; therefore he does not have to immediately appear before a federal court, the judge said.
On Tuesday, federal authorities charged Rahami with bombing, property destruction and the use of weapons of mass destruction regarding the bombing in Chelsea on Saturday night that injured 31 people, as well as pipe bombs planted in Seaside Park, New Jersey, on Saturday and in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on Sunday night.
In a new interview, Rahamis father, Mohammad Rahami, offered more information on what he told the FBI when he contacted them in 2014 to share his concerns about his sons interest in terrorism, following a domestic incident in which the younger Rahami stabbed his brother.
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I told the FBI to keep an eye on him, Mohammad Rahami told the New York Times. They said, Is he a terrorist? I said: I dont know. I cant guarantee you 100% if he is a terrorist. I dont know which groups he is in. I cant tell you.
But he did share with the FBI the specific behaviors that concerned him.
The way he speaks, his videos, when I see these things that he listens to, for example, al-Qaida, Taliban, he watches their videos, their poetry, he said he told authorities.
Rahamis wife, Asia Bibi Rahami, flew into New York from Dubai on Wednesday night to speak with authorities about her husband. Asia Rahami is a Pakistani national who reportedly wed Rahami during his 2014 visit to Pakistan. It was an arranged marriage, reported CBS, who said she is working with investigators and is not considered a suspect.
When Rahami returned from Pakistan after marrying Asia, customs officials flagged him and put him through secondary screening, reported the New York Times. After concerns over his travel history, which included a trip to Turkey in 2014 when authorities were concerned about foreigners heading there to fight in Syria, customs officials contacted the National Targeting Center, a federal agency that examines potential threats, said the Times.
A US official told the Guardian on Tuesday that Rahami was not on any US watchlists.
The blood-stained notebook found with Rahami echoes the ideas raised by Isis spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, according to the Times. Adnani had called on followers unable to join the fight in Syria to take up their own arms and commit violence at home.
On one page of his notebook, Rahami wrote:
back to Sham [a name used for Syria] Guidance come / Sheikh Anwar / Brother Adnani / Dawla. Said it clearly attack The Kuffar in their backyard.
Authorities view this as a reference to Adnanis speech in May to commit pro-Isis attacks against western citizens in their home countries.
Police began their pursuit of of Rahami on Sunday, after the bombs in New York and New Jersey on Saturday, explained CBS. They feared Rahami was trying to escape in a car, and stopped the car near the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, which runs from Staten Island to Brooklyn, on Sunday night. But it was a false alarm: the five people in the car were related to Rahami, but he was not in the car himself.
Meanwhile the FBI 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.
The two men, who took the bag but left the improvised bomb on the street, are not suspects, officials said, but investigators want to interview them as witnesses.
Theyre not in any jeopardy of being arrested, Jim Watters, chief of the New York police departments counter-terrorism unit, said on Wednesday. We have no reason to believe theyre connected.
Prosecutors said surveillance video shows Rahami rolling a suitcase down the street, then abandoning it on the sidewalk where that second device was found.
A few minutes later, two men pass by the luggage and appear to admire it, police said. They then remove a pressure cooker from the luggage, leave the pressure cooker on the sidewalk and walk away with the luggage.
I think they were more interested in the bag, not what they were taking out, Watters said, adding that they were very, very lucky the bomb didnt explode.
The attacks in New York and New Jersey were the latest in a series in the US inspired by Islamic militant groups including al-Qaida and Islamic State.
A pair of ethnic Chechen brothers killed three people and injured more than 260 others at the Boston marathon in 2013 with homemade pressure-cooker bombs similar to those used in this weekends attacks.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report