Second suspect in NY bomb plot held

MOSI SECRET

The Bangladeshi national who was arrested Wednesday on charges that he plotted to blow up the Federal Reserve Bank of New York had an accomplice in San Diego, who was arrested later on unrelated child-pornography charges, a law enforcement official said on Thursday.

Howard Willie Carter II, was arrested after an agent with the FBI found 1,000 images and three video files containing child pornography on a laptop and hard drive in the trash near Carter's apartment, according to a government document. Officials used material stored on the computer to trace it back to Carter.

The computer also contained e-mails addressed to "Yaqeen," a name that Brooklyn prosecutors said Carter had used in the plot to bomb the Federal Reserve building.

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn charged Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, 21, with conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction and with providing material support to al-Qaeda.

Nafis had been under surveillance for months as part of an elaborate sting operation. An undercover officer gave him fake bomb material that could not have exploded. Nafis met several times with the undercover officer to plan the attack, and mentioned he was collaborating with Yaqeen, who was identified in the complaint as a co-conspirator.

In July, the complaint against Nafis said, he told the undercover agent that Yaqeen had told him about a military base in Baltimore, with only one guard standing outside, that they could attack.

Carter had been placed under surveillance in San Diego as early as August, according to court documents in the pornography case. A federal agent there found the computer involved in that case on August 16, but officials waited until after Nafis's arrest to arrest Carter.

Bangla officials quiz Nafis kin

DHAKA: Bangladesh's Foreign Minister Dipu Moni said the country's authorities were trying to find out whether there were any grounds to the accusations against Nafis. "Bangladesh intelligence visited the residence of Nafis in Dhaka on Thursday night and interrogated his parents and relatives to find out details of his life pattern in Bangladesh," she said. Earlier Nafis's father Quazi Ahsanullah, a banker, had said, "My son couldn't have done it." — Reuters

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