FBI arrest New York Federal Reserve bomb plot suspect - UPDATE

1,439 views · Published 20 November 2012 · 0:45 · Indexed 16 October 2026

Channel: News Direct · 2012 · News & Politics

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The FBI arrested a 21-year-old Bangladeshi man on Wednesday in a sting operation on charges of attempting to blow up the New York Federal Reserve Bank with a 1,000-pound bomb. Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis faces charges of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to give material support to al Qaeda in a statement given by the U.S. Department of Justice. If convicted, he would face life in prison. Nafis began to look for recruits to help him carry out the attack after arriving in the US in January 2012 on a student visa. The sting began in July when an informant introduced Nafis to an undercover FBI agent pretending to be an al Qaeda facilitator.

On Wednesday morning, the two traveled in a van to a New York warehouse where Nafis received 20 50-pound bags of inert ANFO, a common industrial explosive, from the FBI agent. He put together what he thought was a real bomb in the van, and then parked the van outside the bank on Liberty Street. The two then went to a nearby hotel so Nafis could record a video message before detonating the bomb using a cellphone. After several failed attempts to detonate the bomb, federal agents arrested him.

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