Conflicting images of terror suspect emerge
20 Oct 2012 7:04 AM IST
At the Missouri college where Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis enrolled, a classmate said he often remarked that true Muslims don’t believe in violence.
That image seemed startlingly at odds with the Bangladesh native’s arrest in an FBI sting this week on charges of trying to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank in New York with what he thought was a 1,000-pound car bomb. ‘I can’t imagine being more shocked about somebody doing something like this,’ said Jim Dow, a 54-year-old Army veteran who rode home from class with Nafis twice a week.
‘I didn’t just meet this kid a couple of times. We talked quite a bit. ... And this doesn’t seem to be in character.’
Nafis’ family in Dhaka, Bangladesh, denied he could have been involved in the plot. His parents said he was incapable of such actions and came to America only to study. Federal investigators, often accused by defense attorneys of entrapping and leading would-be terrorists along, said the 21-year-old Nafis made the first move over the summer, reaching out for accomplices and eventually contacting a government informant, who then went to federal authorities.
They said he also selected his target, drove the van loaded with dummy explosives up to the door of the bank, and tried to set off the bomb from a hotel room using a cellphone he thought had been rigged as a detonator.
That image seemed startlingly at odds with the Bangladesh native’s arrest in an FBI sting this week on charges of trying to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank in New York with what he thought was a 1,000-pound car bomb. ‘I can’t imagine being more shocked about somebody doing something like this,’ said Jim Dow, a 54-year-old Army veteran who rode home from class with Nafis twice a week.
‘I didn’t just meet this kid a couple of times. We talked quite a bit. ... And this doesn’t seem to be in character.’
Nafis’ family in Dhaka, Bangladesh, denied he could have been involved in the plot. His parents said he was incapable of such actions and came to America only to study. Federal investigators, often accused by defense attorneys of entrapping and leading would-be terrorists along, said the 21-year-old Nafis made the first move over the summer, reaching out for accomplices and eventually contacting a government informant, who then went to federal authorities.
They said he also selected his target, drove the van loaded with dummy explosives up to the door of the bank, and tried to set off the bomb from a hotel room using a cellphone he thought had been rigged as a detonator.
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