Free Republic

The case of the Bangladeshi man charged with attempting to blow up the New York Federal Reserve Bank raises some troubling questions related to the international-student process This spring, Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis was studying cybersecurity at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau. How did he get from Bangladesh to the school, some 8,255 miles away? Who was responsible for screening him? And how did he end up in New York City, where he was arrested, instead of Southeast Missouri State? There are any number of ways a student like Mr. Nafis could have arrived at the school,...

Updated at 8 p.m. ET: NEW YORK - A suspected terrorist parked a van packed with what he thought was a 1,000-pound bomb next to the Federal Reserve building in Lower Manhattan and tried to detonate it Wednesday morning before he was arrested in a terror sting operation, authorities said. The suspect, 21-year-old Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, is a Bangladeshi national who came to the U.S. on a student visa in January for the specific purpose of launching a terror attack here, authorities said. He allegedly told an undercover agent last month that he hoped the attack would disrupt...

Its hero and editor are dead, but the al-Qaida magazine, Inspire, continues to do just that. According to the complaint filed in federal district court in New York, Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, 21, a student from Bangladesh arrested Wednesday and charged with trying to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in ManhattanÂ’s Financial District, was the latest Islamist militant to try to follow the example of the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and the English-language magazine, Inspire, created in his honor. Quazi Nafis, who came to the United States last January on a student visa, had big...

“He is very gentle and devoted to his studies,” says the father of Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, who was arrested after trying to detonate what he thought was a 1,000-pound bomb at the New York City Federal Reserve Bank. And it could be true: he could be a gentle, studious soul. His studies of Islam could have led him to the conviction that he needed to wage jihad against Infidels. Nafis explained his action in clear Islamic terms. He told undercover agents, whom he thought were his fellow plotters: “I don’t want something that’s like, small. I just want...

SNIPPET: "New York City is the center of a public uproar as Internet blogger Pamela Gellar rises with an “anti-jihad” ad campaign." SNIPPET: "Gellar and her group are protesting the Jihad, which in definition is the religious duty of Muslims. According to the Dictionary of Islam, jihad is defined as “A religious war with those who are unbelievers in the mission of Muhammad . . . enjoined especially for the purpose of advancing Islam and repelling evil from Muslims.” The literal meaning of jihad, according to the British Broadcasting Network, “is struggle or effort, and it means much more than...

Last December, the State Department issued a student visa to the Bangladeshi man arrested this week for trying to blow up the Federal Reserve building with what he thought was a 1,000-pound bomb, the State Department confirmed today. Twenty-one-year-old Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, who was arrested Wednesday as part of an FBI sting operation, was reportedly in contact with al Qaeda before he entered the United States in January to attend Southeast Missouri State University, where he was studying cyber security...

A Middle Eastern man tried to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank in Lower Manhattan this morning, law-enforcement sources told the Post. The terrorist parked a van filled with what he thought were explosives outside of the Liberty Street building, sources said, then tried to set them off using a cell phone detonator. The suspect, who was not immediately identified, was provided the explosives from an undercover FBI agent that he met on the Internet and believed to be an accomplice, the sources said. …