The banker dad of the Bangladeshi man accused of trying to blow up the Federal Reserve spent his last penny so his son could get an education in the United States — and is in denial over the charges.
“I spent all my savings to send him to America,” said Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis’ dad, Quazi Ahsanullah.
A weeping Ahsanullah, who talked to Nafis over Skype a few hours before his arrest, said his son could not have been involved in the attack.
“He is very gentle and devoted to his studies,” the father told The Associated Press from his home in a Dhaka suburb.
But Nafis’ academic record is abysmal. At the private North South University in Dhaka, his grades were so low he was put on probation and faced expulsion.
Nafis, 21, dropped out and came to the States in January on a student visa. He spent the spring semester studying cybersecurity at Southeast Missouri State University.
Professors there say he was constantly absent.
His former classmate Jim Dow said, “He’s not an evil person, but this is such an evil thing.”
Dow said he’d often hear Nafis complaining about being lonely and homesick. Mostly, the “real religious” Nafis — who gave Dow a Koran and tried to convert him — whined about being broke because he couldn’t work with a student visa.
He said Nafis told him he didn’t think Osama bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks because a true Muslim wouldn’t commit such acts.
“It’s embarrassing to say, but I really liked him,” Dow told local TV station KFVS-TV.