Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis was arrested Wednesday afternoon after the FBI and NYPD caught him trying to detonate a bond at New York City's Federal Reserve Bank building on Liberty Street in Manhattan.
According to a breaking news report by NBC New York, the 21-year-old was arrested. He allegedly transferred a 1000-pound from Long Island to Manhattan in a van, after which he parked the vehicle by the building and tried to set off the explosives with a cellphone.
Police and FBI say that the young man is being charged with "attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to provide material support to al-Qaida," according to the report by NBC.
According to News Day, Nafis came to the U.S. about a year ago, supposedly in or around January, from Bangladesh.
The FBI says that Nafis was caught under an undercover sting operation in which "one of the individuals he attempted to recruit was actually a source for the FBI," according to USA Today. The report also confirms that he "drove a car carrying what he believed was a bomb to the building in Lower Manhattan, planning to detonate the device," however authorities reiterate that the public was never under any risk since what Nafis thought to be bombs were FBI decoys.
Nafis will appear in court later Wednesday.
The Federal Reserve Bank building is located on Liberty Street in lower Manhattan, a few blocks away from the World Trade Memorial Center. It is one of the 12 Federal Reserve Banks in the country.
