NEW YORK (FOX5NY) - The FBI has released an image of two men believed to have taken a suitcase holding a bomb that didn't explode in Manhattan over the weekend.
Security camera footage shows the men taking a piece of luggage from the sidewalk, removing an improvised explosive device from it, and then leaving the device behind but taking the luggage, according to the FBI. The men may have had no idea that the device they removed was an explosive that could have killed them.
The image shown was taken Saturday on West 27th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. The incident occurred in the the same hour that an explosive device detonated on West 23rd Street.
Officials with the FBI and the NYPD say they are interested in speaking to these unidentified individuals and recovering the luggage. At this time, authorities are calling these men witnesses, nothing more.
"We've looked at the video quite a number of times, and it shows they were out walking along the street, they saw the bag on the sidewalk, they admired the bag, they opened the bag, they removed what turned out to be a device, a pressure cooker," NYPD Counterterrorism Chief Jimmy Walters said.
Ahmad Khan Rahami vowed to martyr himself rather than be caught after setting off explosives in New York and New Jersey, and he'd hoped in a handwritten journal championing jihad that "the sounds of bombs will be heard in the streets," authorities said Tuesday as they filed federal terrorism charges against him.
Reports indicated that Rahami has not been cooperating with federal investigators. But a federal law enforcement source told Fox 5 that Rahami has been unconscious and intubated, using a ventilator to breath, since his shootout with police on Monday. As a result, federal investigators have not been able to interrogate him.