NEW
YORK – The wife of the Afghan-born U.S. citizen charged in last weekend’s
bombings in New York City and New Jersey has returned to the United States, a
law enforcement official said, as a defense lawyer pressed to get access to the
accused man.

Ahmad
Khan Rahami, 28, has been held in a Newark, New Jersey, hospital since being
arrested on Monday with wounds after a shootout with police.

Rahami
faces federal charges in both states stemming from a Saturday night bombing in
Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood that injured 31 people and explosives found in
two New Jersey locations. No one was killed in the blasts.

Rahami’s
wife, Asia Bibi Rahami, flew back to the United States overnight, a law
enforcement official said. She had voluntarily met with U.S. law enforcement
authorities while in the United Arab Emirates this week and gave a statement.

Two
years ago when she was pregnant, Rahami had sought the assistance of a U.S.
congressman from New Jersey in getting her a visa to allow her to come to the
United States from Pakistan.

Rahami
and another woman had a child together but had not seen each other in more than
two years, the second woman said in a statement reported by ABC News.

Rahami
had reached out to them just once in the past year, she said.

“I
have cooperated with authorities and told them all I know about Ahmad
Rahami,” said the woman, who was not named in the statement.

In
court documents filed on Tuesday where she is seeking sole custody of their
child, the woman identified herself as Maria Mena.

Authorities
have been trying to determine whether Rahami, a naturalized U.S. citizen who
emigrated from Afghanistan with his family at the age of 7 and lived in
Elizabeth, New Jersey, had any assistance in planning the bombings or making
the homemade devices.

Rahami
was motivated by militant Islamic views, prosecutors said, citing a journal he
was carrying when captured in which he begged for martyrdom and expressed
outrage at the U.S. “slaughter” of Muslim fighters in Afghanistan,
Iraq, Syria and Palestine. The case is being treated by authorities as an act
of terrorism.

Prosecutors
and New York’s top federal public defender are squabbling over when Rahami will
get a lawyer.

David
Patton, the head of the federal public defenders office in New York, asked on
Wednesday to be appointed as Rahami’s attorney and to be allowed to meet with
him, saying the suspect has not had legal advice thus far.

The
FBI said Rahami was arrested by police in New Jersey and remained in the
custody of that state, not the federal government. A U.S. magistrate judge said
late on Wednesday that he accepted that position.

“The
Government asserts unequivocally that the defendant ‘is not in federal
custody,'” Judge Gabriel Gorenstein wrote in an order. “Whether there
are federal authorities questioning defendant does not address the issue of
custody.”

The
judge said the timetable for when Rahami can meet with a public defender cannot
be decided until the issue of custody is resolved.

Normally,
a U.S. criminal defendant goes before a magistrate with little delay and, if
too poor to afford a lawyer, is appointed a lawyer at that first appearance or
soon afterward.

The
FBI also 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 device behind, are not suspects,
officials said, but potential witnesses.

Reports
circulated that in 2014, Rahami surfaced on the
FBI’s radar about two years ago when Rahami’s father allegedly referred to his
son as a terrorist.

Mohammad
Rahami, his father, made the terrorist claim during a domestic quarrel in
which Ahmad Rahami was allegedly brandishing a knife in a confrontation with a
brother, according to the official. During the incident, the official
said, a neighbor heard Mohammad Rahami order his son out of the house, calling
him a terrorist.

Local
police were called and, as part of the investigation, the neighbor’s statement
was passed to the FBI as part of the
bureau’s “guardian” program, which pursues tips from the
public about possible terror activity.

The
official said the FBI reviewed Ahmad Rahami’s prior activity and interviewed
the father twice. The father told agents, according to the official, that he
made the terrorist claim out of anger.