Naturalized citizen sought in New York City bombing
NEW YORK — Police released a photo of a 28-year-old immigrant wanted for questioning in the bombing that rocked a Manhattan neighborhood, and the governor and mayor said the blast is looking increasingly like an act of terrorism with a foreign connection.
Ahmad Khan Rahami, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Afghanistan with an address in Elizabeth, N.J., should be considered armed and dangerous, Mayor Bill de Blasio said in one of a series of TV appearances just minutes after the photo was released.
Early today, FBI agents swarmed an apartment above a fried chicken restaurant in Elizabeth that’s tied to Rahami. The activity came hours after one of five devices found at the nearby Elizabeth train station exploded while at bomb squad robot attempted to disarm it.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said as investigators gathered information they learned there were “certain commonalities among the bombs,” leading authorities to believe “that there was a common group behind the bombs.”
“We want to get this guy in for questioning,” de Blasio said on CNN. “We need the facts to be able to piece all this together. ... I think we’re going to know a lot more in the course of the day. Things are moving very quickly.”
Saturday night’s blast in the bustling Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan injured 29 people, and another unexploded device made out of a pressure cooker was found several blocks away. In the immediate aftermath of that bombing, de Blasio and Cuomo were careful to say there was no evidence of a link to international terrorism. Both said today that appears to be changing.
“The more we learn with each passing hour is it looks more like terrorism,” de Blasio said in a later interview on NY1 News.
Cuomo, in a separate interview on MSNBC, said: “Today’s information suggests it may be foreign related but we’ll see where it goes. ... My operating premise is anytime, anywhere, seven days a week you could have an incident like this.”
A White House official said President Barack Obama was briefed throughout the night and early today on the investigation into bombs found in New York City and New Jersey. Spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama will comment publicly today.
On Sunday night, FBI agents in Brooklyn stopped “a vehicle of interest” in the investigation of the Manhattan explosion, according to FBI spokeswoman Kelly Langmesser.
She wouldn’t provide further details, but a government official and a law enforcement official who were briefed on the investigation said that five people in the car were being questioned.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the ongoing investigation.
No one has been charged, and the investigation is continuing, Langmesser said.
Cuomo, touring the site of Saturday’s blast in Chelsea, said the unexploded pressure cooker device appeared “similar in design” to the bomb that exploded in Chelsea.
On Sunday, a federal law enforcement official said the Chelsea bomb contained a residue of Tannerite, an explosive often used for target practice that can be picked up in many sporting goods stores. The discovery of Tannerite may be important as authorities probe whether the two New York City devices and the pipe bomb at the Jersey shore are connected.
The pipe bomb exploded Saturday in Seaside Park, N.J., before a charity 5K race to benefit Marines and sailors.