Suspected Chelsea bomber Ahmad Khan Rahami has not yet seen a lawyer, and a public defender in New Jersey says he was denied access to Rahami by a prosecutor.
Union County state public defender Peter Liguori claimed in a letter to the judge that Ann Luvera, a prosecutor in Union County, refused to give Liguori permission to see Rahami, who has been hospitalized in Newark since he became involved in a shootout with police last week. Luvera apparently told Liguori that Rahami, who sustained several gunshot wounds in the shootout, was "unconscious and unable to speak." Rahami, who was charged with bombing a public place and using weapons of mass destruction on Tuesday following last weekend's bombings in New Jersey and Manhattan, has not yet spoken with an attorney.
"It is outrageous that the prosecutor is refusing to give permission to the public defender to visit Mr. Rahami," Udi Ofer, executive director of the ACLU of New Jersey, told the Times. "It is vital that the public defender be given access to his client so that Mr. Rahami’s medical condition may be verified and his rights are protected."
Though, when needed, a public defender is usually promptly appointed by the court after an arrest, in this case Rahami was not provided with a lawyer until his father asked the Union County state public defender's office to represent him late last week. The extent of Rahami's injuries are also unclear, and officials have not provided much information beyond that he was shot several times and that he was still intubated on Thursday.
Meanwhile, a new video obtained by NBC 4 shows Rahami leaving luggage containing a pressure cooker on West 27th Street on Saturday night. The video shows two men later removing the bomb from the luggage, taking the luggage with them—once the device was left on the street, dozens of people walked by it, and a few people even kicked the pressure cooker. The woman who alerted cops to the device, Jane Schreibman, told the station, "I looked at it and said, 'That looks like a child's science equipment, they must have thrown it out in the garbage.' I realize there was no garbage because it's not garbage day."
