Student held in bomb plot 'planned to kill Obama'

The Bangladeshi student accused of plotting to blow up the Federal Reserve in New York was a bank manager's son who had first planned to kill Barack Obama, it was claimed on Thursday.

Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, 21, was arrested on Wednesday after an undercover FBI operation thwarted his alleged attempt to detonate a 1,000lb car bomb in Manhattan.

The alleged al-Qaeda acolyte had hoped to cause carnage, damage the US economy and even halt the presidential election, the FBI said.

Yesterday, however, it was claimed that Nafis's initial plan had been to assassinate Obama. His wish to "attack and kill a high-ranking government official" was aimed at the US president, the FBI alleged. The plan never got beyond the discussion stage.

Details also emerged of the suspect's comfortable, middle-class background. His family lives in a five-storey house in an affluent area of North Dhaka. His father is a branch manager at Bangladesh's national bank while his elder sister is a doctor and lecturer at a medical college.

They expressed astonishment at news of his arrest, insisting Nafis was innocent and the victim of a conspiracy.

"My son can't do it," said his father, Quazi Ahsanullah. "He is very gentle and devoted to his studies." Fariel Bilkis, Nafis's sister, said: "My brother may have been the victim of a conspiracy."

Last night several of his relations were being questioned by police who are attempting to discover if he was in contact with jihadi militants and terrorist suspects in the country.

Nafis studied at Dhaka's respected Ideal school, but failed to get into the Institute of Business Administration at Dhaka University. He enrolled at the private North South University in Dhaka where he studied at the electronics and telecommunications department.

He was expelled in December 2011 because of poor exam results, achieving only 1.95 out of a possible 5.

Nafis is said to have then convinced his father to send him to study in the United States, saying that he would have a better chance of success there.

He arrived in January - a trip friends said was his first abroad - and later enrolled at Southeast Missouri State University on a Bachelor of Business Administration course.

Fellow students said he became vice-president of the school's Muslim Student Association and was deeply religious. However, he then dropped out and enrolled at the ASA Institute in New York, telling his parents that moving to the city would be of more use to his country.

He used Facebook to contact men he thought were al-Qaeda leaders to plot his alleged attack. In fact, they were FBI agents. After his arrest, the US authorities alleged that Nafis had been inspired by videos of sermons by the preacher Anwar al-Awlaki and that his sole purpose in moving to America was to "wage jihad".

The 21 year-old's family struggled to reconcile that description with him yesterday. His brother-in-law, Arik, said: "We heard the news this morning. Everyone is crying here.

"Nafis never showed any form of radicalisation when he was in Bangladesh. He said prayers five times a day and used to read the holy Koran every day."

His Facebook page also showed little sign of radicalisation until after his arrival in the US. Posts from last year speak of his passion for Monopoly and his admiration of MA Mohit, the first Bangladeshi mountaineer to climb Everest.

He also listed the American rapper Eminem as one of favourite musicians. However, between January 24 and October 3 this year, however, after his arrival in America, and as he allegedly set out to make contact with fellow extremists in New York, he answered a series of questions in which he hailed the prophet Mohammed as "the greatest man ever" and predicted that the "future of Bangladesh" would be in a "Khalifa" - an Islamic caliphate under sharia.

After hearing of his arrest, Yusuf Gulzari, an imam at the family's local mosque, said that Nafis had prayed there regularly during his 20 years tenure but he had never had cause for concern.

"[He was] very polite and I never saw the boy with any bad people. I am really astonished that such a good boy could be arrested in connection to this," he said.