Ahmad Khan Rahami: New York bomber suspect’s wife left US days before attack, says police source

The wife of the man suspected of bombings in New Jersey and New York allegedly left the US just days before the attack.

Shortly after she returned to Pakistan, her husband, 28-year-old Ahmad Khan Rahami, was accused of planting homemade bombs in Chelsea, Manhattan, which injured 29 people, as well as in Elizabeth, New Jersey. The second bomb was disarmed by police.

The woman, who has not been identified, was intercepted by authorities in the United Arab Emirates on Monday, where investigators are trying to ascertain if she was aware of the plot, as reported by the LA Times.

The information, being pursued by US authorities, has given a glimpse into the suspect’s life and what led him down the path of apparent radicalisation.

New York governor Andrew Cuomo told CNN that there was no further information on his wife at present.

“There is something to learn in this case study. What radicalised Rahami, and when? Should we have learned something from where he was and when he came back? He went through screenings, but should those screenings be improved?” he asked.

“What is more urgent is did he have any associates that he was working with?”

Rahami, a US naturalised citizen from Afghanistan, was detained after a shootout with the police on Monday.

His family denied all knowledge of the bomb plot.

He was not on any terrorist watch lists, and authorities want to know if he had any contact with al-Qaeda or Isis.

His former partner and the mother of his daughter, Maria, told Fox News that he was a “deadbeat dad” who did not pay child support and disliked the US military and homosexuals. He often disappeared to Afghanistan and Pakistan, she said, once for a year between 2013 and 2014. On one occasion, she said, he returned with a new wife and child.

“He seemed standoffish to American culture, but I never thought he would cross the line,” she said.

Maria, who declined to give her surname, said she met Rahami, the “class clown”, while they were at Edison High School, and believed he had since become “brainwashed”.

”At one point he left to go to Afghanistan, and two years ago he came back, popped up out of nowhere and he was real religious,” his friend, Flee Jones, told the Boston Herald.

“And it was shocking. I’m trying to understand what’s going on. I’ve never seen him like this.”

Rahami had a history of arrests and lawsuits. He stabbed his brother, Nasim Rahami, in the leg on 22 August 2014 and was arrested for aggravated assault and unlawful possession of a knife and a firearm.

He was allowed to walk free despite the arresting officer warning that he was likely a “danger to himself and others”.

The bomb suspect worked at his family’s First American Fried Chicken restaurant in Elizabeth from 2002.

Rahami, his brother and father sued the local police in 2011, alleging that the family had been discriminated against as Muslims and harassed for two years as police tried to get them to shut their restaurant at 10pm each night, when they said they had a legal right to remain open.

On Monday, he was shot three times by police and was taken to hospital.

He has been charged with attempted murder of the police, and has not yet been charged with the bombings.

His bail has been set at $5.2m (£.3.9m).