US terror suspect pleads guilty
2013-02-07 22:15
New York - A Bangladesh native accused of trying to blow
up the Federal Reserve Bank in New York with what he thought was a 450kg car
bomb pleaded guilty on Thursday to terrorism charges related to an FBI sting.
"I had intentions to commit a violent jihadist
act," Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis told the judge. "I deeply
and sincerely regret my involvement in this case."
The 21-year-old faces a possible life term at sentencing
on 30 May.
Nafis was charged in October with attempting to use a
weapon of mass destruction and attempting to provide material support to al-Qaeda.
Investigators said in court papers that he came to the US
bent on jihad and worked out the specifics of a plot when he arrived.
Investigators said Nafis contacted a government
informant, who then went to federal authorities. They said he selected his
target, drove a van loaded with dummy explosives to the door of the bank and
tried to set off the bomb using a cellphone he thought had been rigged as a
detonator.
But it was all fake.
Nafis also believed he had the blessing of al-Qaeda and
was acting on behalf of it, but he has no known ties to the terrorist group,
according to federal officials.
During the investigation, Nafis spoke of his admiration
for Osama bin Laden, talked of writing an article about his plot for an al-Qaeda-affiliated
magazine and said he would be willing to be a martyr but preferred to go home
to his family after carrying out the attack, authorities said.
He also talked about wanting to kill President Barack
Obama and bomb the New York Stock Exchange, officials said.
But family members in Dhaka said they did not believe he
was capable of such actions.
"My son couldn't have done it," Quazi
Ahsanullah said after his son's arrest.
Nafis, who was working as a busboy at a Manhattan
restaurant at the time of his arrest, came to the US as a student.
His parents said he was terrible in school in Bangladesh
and that he persuaded them to send him to study in the US as a way of improving
his job prospects.
He moved to Missouri, where he studied cyber-security at
Southeast Missouri State University.
But he withdrew after one semester and requested that his
records be transferred to a school in Brooklyn.
The university declined to identify which school.
The Federal Reserve Bank in Manhattan is one of 12
branches that, along with the Board of Governors in Washington, make up the
Federal Reserve System that serves as the country's central bank.
- AP
