A 21-year-old Bangladeshi man pleaded guilty Thursday to charges that he tried to set off a huge bomb outside the Federal Reserve bank in New York, not knowing the device was fake and had been provided by law enforcement agents.
“Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, 21, pleaded guilty,” federal prosecutor Loretta Lynch said in a statement.
“The charge to which Nafis pleaded guilty, attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, carries a sentence of up to life imprisonment.”
Nafis admitted that he planned to detonate what he had been told would be a 1,000-pound bomb outside the federal bank in the heavily guarded financial district of lower Manhattan.
Nafis met with an undercover agent who posed as an Al-Qaeda sympathizer and supplied 20 bags of dummy explosive.
On the day for the planned attack, October 17, 2012, Nafis met the undercover agent and assembled the phony bomb, then drove to the bank and parked the van.
In a nearby hotel he recorded a video statement in which he said “We will not stop until we attain victory or martyrdom.”
He then tried repeatedly to detonate the bomb and was arrested.
Bangladeshi pleads guilty to New York bomb plot
