New York: A Bangladeshi immigrant, who allegedly heaped praise on the Islamic State group and Osama bin Laden, has been charged Friday after he was accused of plotting a grenade attack on the bustling tourist-clogged Times Square in the US, authorities said.
Ashiqul Alam, 22, was arrested Thursday after arranging through an undercover agent to buy a pair of semiautomatic pistols with obliterated serial numbers and surveilled the popular Manhattan district to identify the best place for the attack, the the Justice Department said in a statement.
The Bangladeshi immigrant from Queens zeroed in on attacking New York City. Aslam said he wanted to use “suicide vests” or AR-15 rifles in Times Square attack.
Alam and the undercover agent went on several reconnaissance runs there. Alam said a successful attack would make them “legends”, it said.
In the charging documents, Alam expressed his desire to destroy the new World Trade Center in lower Manhattan with “probably a rocket launcher, like a huge one.” He also praised Osama bin Laden, claiming that his “mission is a complete success, thousands of American soldiers died and trillions of their money gone in the war”, the New York times reported. “There is more to this case than just talk and the desire to carry out a terrorist attack” said William Sweeney, a senior FBI official in New York.
“He (Alam) took the steps to follow through on his deadly impulse, purchasing weapons to kill New Yorkers, target an elected official and attack police officers,” he said.
The aspiring terrorist had hoped he and the undercover informant would become “legends” from the planned attack. The charges said an undercover agent first met with Alam in August 2018, but did not say what had brought the two together.
Alam also allegedly praised al-Qaeda and the ISIS over the course of 10 months of clandestine meetings with an undercover officer. (PTI)
