DHAKA, Bangladesh -- A Bangladeshi man accused of trying to bomb the
Federal Reserve building in New York City is a banker's son from a
middle class neighborhood whose family members said Thursday that they
were stunned by his arrest.
The FBI arrested 21-year-old Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis on
Wednesday after he tried to detonate a fake 1,000-pound (454-kilogram)
car bomb, according to a criminal complaint.
Prosecutors said Nafis traveled to the U.S. on a student
visa in January to carry out an attack.
His family said Thursday that Nafis was incapable of such actions.
"My son can't do it," his father, Quazi Ahsanullah, said as he wept
in his home in the Jatrabari neighborhood in north Dhaka.
"He is very gentle and devoted to his studies," he said, pointing to
Nafis' time at the private North South University in Dhaka.
However, Belal Ahmed, a spokesman for the university, said Nafis was a
terrible student who was put on probation and threatened with expulsion
if he didn't bring his grades up. Nafis eventually just stopped coming
to school, Ahmed said.
Ahsanullah said his son convinced him to send him to America to
study, arguing that with a U.S. degree he had a better chance at success
in Bangladesh.
He called on the government to "get my son back home."
Bangladesh does not have the same record of involvement in global
terror as Pakistan, with which it once formed a nation before winning
its independence in 1971. At least one Bangladeshi was among those
detained by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.
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