By Daniel Trotta
(Reuters) – U.S. law enforcement on Wednesday arrested a homeless Florida man and charged him with plotting to bomb the New York Stock Exchange after an undercover employee recorded him saying, “I feel like Bin Laden,” federal officials allege.
The suspect, Harun Abdul-Malik Yener, took steps to set off a bomb outside the stock exchange on Wall Street in lower Manhattan, according to an FBI affidavit. The affidavit was filed in support of a criminal complaint charging Yener with attempting to damage or destroy a building used in interstate commerce by means of an explosive.
Yener has been assigned a federal public defender in the Southern District of Florida whose office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for a statement regarding his defense.
Yener’s motives remained unclear. The FBI said that besides making the comment about Osama bin Laden, the former al Qaeda leader and mastermind of the 2001 attacks on the United States, Yener also described an attempt to join right-wing militias and expressed general anti-government sentiment, saying: “This country is due for a revolution.”
The FBI had been investigating the suspect, described as unhoused and living in Coral Gables, Florida, since February after receiving a tip he was storing bomb-making schematics in a storage unit, the FBI said.
FBI agents found bomb-making sketches, timers, circuit boards and other electronics.
In conversations with at least three undercover employees, Yener said setting off an improvised explosive device would lead to a “reboot” or “reset” of the U.S. government.
“The Stock Exchange, we want to hit that, because it will wake people up,” he added, according to the FBI affidavit.
Yener wanted a device powerful enough to blow off the doors so that “anything existing in there will be killed,” Yener told two undercover employees who had told him they had access to commercial-grade explosives, the FBI said.