FBI sting foils New York bank bomb plot

According to Sky News, Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, of Bangladesh, arrived in the US in January with plans to "destroy America".

The FBI said that before trying to carry out the alleged terror plot, the 21-year-old went to a warehouse to help assemble a 453kg bomb using inert material. Court documents claim he asked an undercover agent to videotape him saying: "We will not stop until we attain victory or martyrdom."

Agents grabbed Nafis, armed with a mobile phone he believed was rigged as a detonator, after he made several attempts to blow up the bomb inside a vehicle parked next to the Federal Reserve, prosecutors said.

The official complaint said Nafis contacted a confidential FBI informant in July telling him he wanted to form a terror cell.

In further conversations, authorities said Nafis proposed several spots for his attack, including the New York Stock Exchange, and that in a written letter taking responsibility for the Federal Reserve job he was about to carry out, he said he wanted to "destroy America".

Authorities insisted the plot never posed an actual risk - but that it demonstrated the value of using sting operations to neutralise young extremists eager to harm Americans.

"Attempting to destroy a landmark building and kill or maim untold numbers of innocent bystanders is about as serious as the imagination can conjure," said Mary Galligan, acting head of the FBI's New York office.

"The defendant faces appropriately severe consequences."

Nafis has appeared in court in Brooklyn to face charges of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to provide material support to al Qaeda.