The Afghan government has detained three relatives of Ahmad Rahami — an Afghan-American man accused of detonating bombs in New Jersey and New York — as part of an investigation into the bombing suspect, a senior Afghan government official said Thursday.
The relatives were flown to Kabul, Afghanistan, on Wednesday after the Afghan government requested they be detained the day before at Dubai International Airport in the United Arab Emirates, the official said on condition of anonymity.
The official did not name the family members and did not provide details about what the investigation entails.
Rahami, 28, was arrested last week in New Jersey after a shootout with police on suspicion of detonating bombs September 17 first in Seaside Park, New Jersey, and then in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood.
He is “incapacitated” in a hospital from wounds in the shootout and has not had a court hearing, according to a federal court filing last week.
No one was injured when the New Jersey bomb exploded in a trash bin along the route of a Marine Corps charity race. The Chelsea blast injured 29 people.
Police said they also believe Rahami planted a pressure cooker bomb a few blocks away from the Chelsea explosion, but that bomb did not detonate.
Rahami, who born in Afghanistan, first came to the United States in 1995 and became a naturalized citizen in 2011. He had been living with his family in New Jersey.
Rahami was charged last week in federal court with four counts — use of weapons of mass destruction, bombing a public place, destruction of property and use of a destructive device.
Complaints filed in federal court in Manhattan and New Jersey contain details from the investigation and Rahami’s handwritten journal, which was damaged in the police shootout.
He also faces charges in New Jersey state court stemming from the shootout in Linden before he was taken into custody.
Rahami’s wife returned to the United States last week after speaking with the FBI in Dubai, according to law enforcement officials. She told investigators in Dubai she had no knowledge of her husband’s activities, but she was expected to talk more with the agency now she is back in the United States.
Sources told CNN that it appeared she left the country in June and previously had booked a ticket to return last week.
