A Bangladeshi man, who is one of the prime accused for plotting to bomb the U.S. Federal Reserve, has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for using weapons of mass destruction and supporting the terrorist outfit, Al Qaeda.
Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, aged 22, had driven a van loaded with dummy explosives to the central bank branch in a bid to set them off using a mobile phone detonator from a hotel room, the BBC reports.
Earlier, Nafis had written a five-page letter to the federal judge explaining that the reason behind his violent intentions were his childhood stammer and betrayal by his girlfriend in Bangladesh.
Nafis apologised to a judge, to his parents and to the city of New York, just before the sentence for life imprisonment was handed down to him.
Nafis also told the court that he had rejected radical Islam, the report added. Nafis reportedly came to U.S. to study cyber-security at a university in Missouri, but was put on probation for poor grades.
He, meanwhile, had travelled to New York in search of work, but started seeking support for a terror attack online with revengeful intentions, using Facebook and other social media platforms.??It is being alleged that one of his associates was a government informant.
Officials said that Nafis had expressed his admiration for slain Al Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, and wrote about wanting to kill U.S. President Barack Obama and attacking the New York Stock Exchange on the social media.