TerrorismBangladeshi national arrested for trying to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank
A 21-year-old Bangladeshi national, Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, was arrested by FBI agents after he attempted to detonate what he believed was a 1,000-pound bomb in front of the Federal Reserve Bank building on Liberty Street, Manhattan; the device, however, was a fake provided to him by undercover FBI agents who had been tracking his activity, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force said Wednesday afternoon
A 21-year-old Bangladeshi national, Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, was arrested by FBI agents after he attempted to detonate what he believed was a 1,000-pound bomb in front of the Federal Reserve Bank building on Liberty Street, Manhattan. The device, however, was a fake provided to him by undercover FBI agents who had been tracking his activity, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force said Wednesday afternoon.
Fox News reports that during an appearance in court, he was accused of having overseas connections to al Qaeda, and of travelling to the United States in January to recruit individuals to form a terrorist cell and conduct an attack on American soil. He came to the United States on a student visa, after applying and being accepted to a university in Missouri. One of Nafis’s potential recruits was an FBI informant, who alerted authorities, the FBI said.
The criminal complaint says that Nafis told undercover agents: “I don’t want something that’s like, small. I just want something big. Something very big … that will shake the whole country, that will make America, not one step ahead, change of policy, and make one step ahead, for the Muslims … that will make us one step closer to run the whole world.”
A U.S. official told Fox News that President Obama was Nafis’s first target, but the criminal complaint only refers to “a high-ranking official” as one of Nafis’s targets. The complaint also mentions the New York Stock Exchange as a proposed target.
“Attempting to destroy a landmark building and kill or maim untold numbers of innocent bystanders is about as serious as the imagination can conjure,” FBI Acting Assistant Director-in-Charge Galligan said. “The defendant faces appropriately severe consequences.”
NYPD commissioner Raymond Kelly noted that there have been fifteen terrorist plots targeting the city since the attacks of 9/11.
“Al Qaeda operatives and those they have inspired have tried time and again to make New York City their killing field,” Kelly said. “After 11 years without a successful attack, it’s understandable if the public becomes complacent. But that’s a luxury law enforcement can’t afford.”
