Bangladeshi National Arrested In New York Bomb Plot
A Bangladeshi national was recently arrested in a lower Manhattan hotel room suspected of his role in plotting to blow up the New York Federal Building.
According to Federal Bureau of Investigation officials, Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis was arrested after he tried to repeatedly use a cell phone to set off material he thought was a bomb in a vehicle sitting outside the Fed.
Nafis, 21, is being held without bail after his brief arraignment on Oct. 17. No plea deal was entered in the Brooklyn’s U.S. District Court to charges that he attempted to provide material support to al-Qaeda and use a weapon of mass destruction. The arrest came as part of an FBI sting.
Nafis, according to the FBI, is a huge devotee of al-Qaeda but was not working with the terrorist group. He came to the U.S. on a student visa to Southeast Missouri State University and was working on his own during the bombing attempt.
The criminal complaint stipulates that the New York Police Department and FBI found out about Nafis’ terror attempt when he reached out to an FBI informant to create a terrorist cell. The sting stared in mid-summer when he came across an undercover FBI agent who was pretending to be a facilitator for al-Qaeda.
Conversations were recorded between the informant, undercover agent and Nafis where the suspect said he wanted the plan he was concocting to be approved by al Qaeda’s higher ups. Nafis said he wanted the attack to shake the U.S. to its core, saying a successful strike could cancel November’s presidential election.
Nafis started gathering bomb-making material and was given 20 50-pound bags of material that he thought were explosives but were not. The FBI said the public was never in danger while this was going on.
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