SOUTH PORTLAND–Mohammad Shafiq Rahman, known as Shafiq to friends and co-workers at the Artist & Craftsman Supply in Portland, was not at work Friday, but his absence was apparent.

The 33-year-old South Portland man has been detained on a visa violation by law enforcement officials investigating the attempted SUV bombing in Times Square, and the store has been overrun with the media. Rahman and his new wife of several months, Sara Rahman, live in an apartment at 11 Kelley St., according to press reports.

Rahman and two other Pakistanis who were picked up last week in Watertown, Mass., are thought by authorities to have supplied funds to car-bomb suspect Faisal Shahzad, but may not have known how the money would be used, officials said. All three were detained Thursday on immigration violations. FBI officials have told Artist & Craftsman Supply owner Larry Adlerstein that Rahman would be out of work for an indefinite period of time.

Maureen Renner, a Portland resident and Rahman’s direct supervisor, said Rahman was the company’s information technology head for all 15 stores. The art supply store originated in Portland and is now spread out across the country.

She said Rahman had answered an ad in the online classified ad site Craigslist, had walked in off the street and applied for the job. She said he was “very capable. He was not particularly interested in art.” She said she would not answer any personal questions, although it’s been reported he was recently married.

Renner is hoping he comes back soon.

“I have a business to run,” she said.

Adlerstein said Rahman, was a “very gentle, very soft-spoken” man, someone he considered a friend, and that opinion has not changed.

Last week, Adlerstein had asked Rahman how he felt as a Pakistani, about all “this negative stuff going on about Pakistan.”

“Yes, It’s hard,” Adlerstein said Rahman said. Then Rahman told him he had met Shahzad, a Pakistani-born former financial analyst, through Connecticut’s Pakistani community about eight years ago. Shahzad had lived with his family in Bridgeport.

Adlerstein said several days after that conversation, the FBI showed up at the store and told him Rahman had been arrested. FBI agents seized at least one computer that Rahman had used at his place of work.

Residents of the Kelley Street neighborhood declined to comment this week.