A 21-year-old Bangladeshi man was arrested on Wednesday in an FBI sting after attempting to blow up a fake car bomb outside the Federal Reserve building in Manhattan.
Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, who lives in Jamaica, Queens, in New York, was on a mission “tpo destroy America” and came to the United States to wage jihad.
His arrest was the result of a several-month investigation, and that the suspect is from Jamaica, Queens, in New York.
New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Nafis came to the U.S. on a student visa under the guise of going to school in Missouri but was really plotting an attack
He reportedly wanted to kill scores of people, wreak havoc on the US economy and stop the presidential election when he parked on Liberty Street, seat of the Federal Reserve, around 8 a.m. and repeatedly dialed into the cellphone detonator from a nearby hotel room.
But all he did was set off an indicator in the van that proved he tried to set off the explosion. He was promptly arrested by agents.
“I don’t want something that’s like small. I just want something big,” Nafis told an undercover agent during a recorded August meeting in Central Park.
Before trying to carry out the terror plot, the man went to a warehouse to help assemble a 1,000-pound bomb using inert material.
Nafis appeared in a federal court in Brooklyn to face charges of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to provide material support to al Qaeda. If convicted in this case, he could face life in prison.
Authorties claimed the case demonstrated the value of using sting operations to neutralize young radicals eager to harm Americans.