Second man arrested in New York bombing plot

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Published time: October 19, 2012 16:39
Edited time: October 19, 2012 20:39

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Blast, Court, Crime, Police, Security, Terrorism, USA

The Bangladeshi man arrested for trying to detonate what he thought was a 1,000-pound bomb had an alleged accomplice in San Diego, who was arrested on unrelated child-pornography charges after being monitored by the feds for months.

California resident Howard Willie Carter II, 36, was arrested after Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents found 1,000 child pornography images and three video files on a laptop and hard drive in the garbage near his apartment, the New York Times reported.

After looking through the files, agents found information linking Carter to the bomb plot of New York’s Federal Reserve Bank. Carter’s computer contained e-mails, which addressed him as “Yaqueen.” The Bangladeshi who attempted to detonate the bomb, 21-year-old Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, had told undercover officials that Yaqueen was a conspirator.

Carter, using the name Yaqueen, had previously suggested to Nafis that they attack a military base in Baltimore, which had only one guard standing outside.

Both men had been under government surveillance as part of an elaborate sting operation. Carter started being monitored by feds as early as August, but officials waited until Nafis’s arrest before going after him.

Both men are now facing charges of conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction and with providing material support to al-Qaeda.

Nafis claimed responsibility for his planned attack, asserting that he wanted to “destroy America.” He also referred to former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden as “beloved.” The Bangladeshi had been studying in the US on a student visa since January, while plotting to detonate a bomb. He sought out help from al-Qaeda sympathizers and potential recruits. One of these potential recruits was an FBI agent, which led to the undercover sting operation.

Working with undercover FBI agents posing as co-conspirators, Nafis was immediately arrested after dialing a number on his cell phone that he thought would detonate a bomb inside the Federal Reserve Bank on Wednesday.

“I don’t want something that’s like, small,” Nafis allegedly told undercover authorities. “I just want something big. Something very big. Very, very, very, very big, that will shake the whole country.”

Nafis also expressed his desire to kill a high-ranking government official. He also considered the New York Stock Exchange as a potential target.

“Attempting to destroy a landmark building and kill or maim untold numbers of innocent bystanders is about as serious as the imagination can conjure,” acting Assistant Director of the FBI in New York Mary Galligan told the Los Angeles Times.

Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis. (AFP Photo)

Comments (8)

Kermit Frazier (unregistered) 20.10.2012 19:43

Detonate Your Pants.

Undo

juda 20.10.2012 17:49

It's all pretty sick isn't it. There are so many holes in this story it wouldn't even qualify for swiss cheese. Like the Colorado Massecre --the picture Dad holds up does not look like the 'movie star' pic the press put out. Also the boy's Dad is a V.P. at the Central Bank in the capitol city of Bangladesh, -----where in May, in Bangladesh a monsoon of both oil and gas were found, and it is nationalized, not privatized. Oh dear, can't have that. http://bd news24.com/ is the Bangladesh paper in English. Can't even begin to imagine what is going on here. I have enormous compassion for his Family. Enormous. Facebook, evidently, is the evidence. Are certain Web Sites becoming spy agencies? I have questions about the boy being 'coached' through all this. A fellow student at Southeast Missouri, an older man, physics, said he was shy, lonely, religious, especially as to peace and non-violence -and nice. His best friend back home said he wanted to be a businessman. His Dad said he was studying Bus. Admin. What's going on that a kid from the Capital City of a couple of million ends up in a red neck state like Missouri, supposedly studying cypersecurity? And then at a college (private) on Manhatten studying computers? How did he negotiate his way to school here? Who helped him? Who was his contact? I hate all this. How did he do so much in such a short amt. of time? 21---science has hard smoking gun evidence that the physical part of the brain does not develop for full adulthood decision and discretion and emotional maturity until between 21 and 26 (males later) and we are putting them in prisons and having them kill and torture and putting the blame on them? 1000's upon 1000's of global kids are being trained as 'assets' and above....and many getting screwed and caught up in stuff, --so the conspirists tell us. How do we find out? What do we do? Much and most of this training, supposedly is in US, on our dollar. Blood on our hands?

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Epinoia (unregistered) 20.10.2012 15:51

According to the N.Y.P. article:

"He was there from January to May, pursuing a bachelor's degree in cybersecurity, before leaving the school and requesting his records be transferred."

This guy was seeking a bachellor's degree in cybersecurity, and yet we're meant to believe that he discarded a laptop into a dumpster outside is place with K-P on it? COME ON. This isn't very believable. Why didn't he smash the drive? Why didn't he erase the drive? It can't have been because he didn't know how, given his choice in degree pursuit.

And why were the cops looking in the dumpster in the fist place? The story doesn't say.

I have no desire to see someone with K-P go free. But what bothers me is the knee-j3rk reaction the mere mention of K-P will do to the minds of people. He will be guilty until proven innocent, and people will not use logic to consider his guilt or innocense, they'll use Pathos. And perhaps that's the whole point? Plant said laptop, and watch presumption of innocense melt away like butter subjected to a blowtorch.

*s hrugs*

I'll be very interested to hear exactly why they went snooping in the dumpster in the first place -- assuming that tidbit is ever released.

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