Courtroom sketch of Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis
A judge in New York City sentenced a Bangladeshi national to 30 years in prison on Friday for attempting to bomb the Federal Reserve Bank in the Wall Street financial district last year.
22-year-old Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis had earlier pleaded guilty to attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and admitted under oath that he intended to use a cell phone to detonate the 1,000-pound device.
His plot was foiled by an FBI undercover agent posing as an Al Qaeda facilitator. Unaware that he was being recorded, Nafis repeatedly declared that he had come to the United States to carry out a terrorist attack.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is a five-minute walk away from the site of the World Trade Center, whose twin towers were destroyed on September 11, 2001 by airliners commandeered by Al Qaeda hijackers.
"Nafis's goals of martyrdom and carnage were thwarted by the vigilance of law enforcement," said US district attorney Loretta Lynch after US District Court judge Carol Amon handed down his sentence.
"He will now spend the next 30 years where his own actions have landed him - in a federal prison cell," she said.