A Bangladesh Suspect Held In Plot To Bomb New York Federal Reserve

"NEW YORK - When he arrived in the United States  from Bangladesh on a student visa, Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis immediately set about trying to recruit like-minded people in a bid to, as he put it, "do something very, very big that will shake the whole country".

Nafis, 21, intended to launch a terror strike and eventually settled on a target - the Federal Reserve Bank of New York - believing that a successful attack there would damage the American economy.


One of the people he recruited for his scheme, however, was an informer for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and soon enough the federal law enforcement body drew up an elaborate scheme to thwart his plans.

That scheme ended on Wednesday morning, with the young man repeatedly trying to detonate a "bomb" using his cellphone before FBI agents let him know the game was up by placing him under arrest.

Though the materials used for the bomb were fake, authorities alleged that Nafis' admiration of Osama bin Laden and aspirations for martyrdom were not. He was charged with conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction and providing material support to Al Qaeda.

Prosecutors said he had also spoken of a desire to "attack and kill" a high-ranking government official. That official was President Barack Obama, according to one law enforcement officer. If convicted, Nafis could face up to life in prison.

The case appears to be the latest to fit a model in which, in the process of flushing out people they believe present a risk of terrorism, federal law enforcement officials have played the role of enabler.

Agents and informers have provided suspects with encouragement, guidance, money and even, the subjects of the sting operations are led to believe, the materials needed to carry out an attack.

Though these operations have almost always held up in court, they have come under increasing criticism from those who believe that many of the subjects, even some who openly espoused violence, would have been unable to execute such plots without substantial assistance from the government.

Both FBI leaders and federal prosecutors have defended the approach as valuable in finding and stopping people predisposed to commit terrorism.

The suspect's father, Mr Quazi Mohammad Ahsanullah, a Senior Vice- President of a private bank, yesterday denied that his son, who had studied at a private university in Dhaka, was involved in the plot and alleged that he was the victim of a "racist conspiracy".

Source : Here