Blogger Rumi (a successful medical doctor in US who came here on a student visa in the 1980s): “The outrageous, inexcusable act of The Bangladeshi Student, facilitated and influenced by an FBI undercover agent, has claimed it’s first victim – the student visa system.”
Student visas concern after terror plot
Grand Jury to be convened
Nafis was allegedly planning something for which he will go to jail for life. But, how far would he have actually got without help from the FBI? Below are some discussions in US blogosphere about this topic.
Chuñdy: No one is arguing that he shouldn’t face serious jail time. We are questioning whether the FBl and the media should be portraying this 21-year-old doofus as a terrorist mastermind. They caught a gullible wannabe jihadist who couldn’t tell the difference between an inert bomb and a real bomb. Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.
If FBI Both Planned & Thwarted a Terrorist Attack, Who’s the Hero?
ADAM CLARK ESTES
OCT 17, 2012/Atlantic
A 21-year-old Bangladeshi man tried and failed to blow up the Federal Reserve Building in downtown Manhattan on Wednesday, largely thanks to the efforts of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That “thanks” ought to be attached both to the “tried” and the “failed” parts of that sentence, since it was the FBI that not only coaxed the suspect, Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, into moving forward with the bombing but also supplied him with the means to do so. Don’t worry. The Feds know what they’re doing. They do this all the time.
…These aren’t easy questions. In general, America’s response to the terror threat has been expansive,sometimes intrusive and inevitably aggressive. But we’ve been led to believe that the alternative to an aggressive defense against terrorism is, well, terrorism, and terrorism stinks. This is generally how debates against laws like the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act devolve into discussions about how much we’re willing to sacrifice civil liberties to feel safe in a fearsome world. American lawmakers have approved and renewed both of these measures, probably because they’d rather err on the side of national security.
But what about the FBI? On a regular basis, the FBI recruits, trains and compensates informants like the one that helped facilitate the attempted bombing on the Federal Reserve Building. When we say “regular basis,” we mean that there are literally thousands of informants across the country working with would be terrorists, and so far, they have a pretty good success rate. The latest issue of Mother Jones includes a feature about these efforts. It’s worth reading in full, but we’ll quote it at length to make one last point:
Here’s how it works: Informants report to their handlers on people who have, say, made statements sympathizing with terrorists. Those names are then cross-referenced with existing intelligence data, such as immigration and criminal records. FBI agents may then assign an undercover operative to approach the target by posing as a radical. Sometimes the operative will propose a plot, provide explosives, even lead the target in a fake oath to Al Qaeda. Once enough incriminating information has been gathered, there’s an arrest — and a press conference announcing another foiled plot.
This sounds a lot like the foiled Federal Reserve plot, but that’s not the only one:
If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because such sting operations are a fixture in the headlines. Remember the Washington Metro bombing plot? The New York subway plot? The guys who planned to blow up the Sears Tower? The teenager seeking to bomb a Portland Christmas tree lighting? Each of those plots, and dozens more across the nation, was led by an FBI asset.
And so we return to our original question: If the FBI both planned and thwarted a terrorist attack, who’s the hero? This is up for debate, and until we know more about what happened in this latest failed attack, we won’t know exactly how determined Nafis, the suspected terrorist, was about destroying America.
READ FULL ARTICLE
FBI ‘stings’ under scrutiny after NY bomb plot arrest
Bangladeshi Newspaper PROTHOM ALO headline:
“Family says he was set up”
আলাল ও দুলাল | ALAL O DULAL 
Nafiz is an idiot who lived in a fantasy world. He prob googled ” how to be a terrorist in the 21st Century by Sheil Al Fool”. I personally he fantacised abt it a bit just like a boy fantacised abt a girl and sees all her actions to be a sign of them meant to be together.” If the FBI didn’t entice into it I don’t believe he wud have gone anywhere with it. If his dad knew this and had a go at him he wud have prob shut up and gone back to his studies. He shud have just been deported for being a fool and not used as clown for a headline
No one should not support terrorism whether in the USA or outside world. It simply yields the worst of mankind. Nafiz was a plot by FBI, like we have seen in hollywood movies. But at the end of the movie, we all expect a better ending with good morale and learning thought. FBI proved that given an opportunity and by adopting different path, a meritorious student can divert his mind from good path to bad. This is how exactly the terrorists work in the civic society, they pick and chose and then when they are lucky, they produce bad apples. I don’t know how much guilt this kid may take in the eye of US justice system, but he should be given another chance to get straighten his life when everything gets settled.