He got 30 years in prison, after his plea for mercy to Chief United States District judge Carol Bagley Amon did not work.
Nafis was arrested in Oct 17, 2012 while trying to detonate what he believed to be a 1,000-pound (454-kg) bomb hidden in a van.
Instead, the van carried inert materials planted by an undercover FBI agent as part of a ‘sting operation’.
Prosecutors said Nafis attempted to use a mobile phone to detonate the bogus device.
His sentence includes the time he had spent behind bars since his arrest.
The US authorities would deport Nafis to Bangladesh on completion of his sentence.
He would have to be under surveillance thereafter, the judge said in the verdict.
Judge Amon said Nafis had no scope to appeal against the verdict but if he had anything to say about his sentence he would have to write within two weeks.
Court-appointed defence lawyer Heidi Cesare has said they would not challenge the verdict.
Nafis’s arrest had stirred the global media.
The court fixed Aug 9 for sentencing the 22-year-old after he had pleaded guilty for trying to use a 'weapon of mass destruction' in support of Al-Qaeda on Feb 7 this year.
On Friday, the judge entered the courtroom at around 9:45am local time. Minutes later, Nafis was brought in and seated beside the defence lawyer.
Assistant US Attorney James P Loonam, the prosecutor, sat behind them.
Several FBI and NYPD members, who went along with Nafis in his planned attack on the Federal Reserve, were also present in the courtroom.
Bangladesh Consul General Monirul Islam, several human rights lawyers and a dozen journalists were there too.
The defence pleaded the court not to sentence him for more than 20 years considering his age and the overall situation and produced an application from Nafis’s mother.
Cesare reflected on several aspects of Nafis’s troubled childhood back in Bangladesh. She said her client did not have the chance to interact with good friends and was psychologically devastated.
She said his parents always wanted him to be educated and talked to him often after his arrest. Cesare said it was not possible for a man to get involved in crimes who shares a strong family bond.
The defence lawyer argued that her client was never a member of Al Qaeda but was inspired by their work. She asked the court to give Nafis an opportunity to lead a decent life.
Prosecutor Loonam said Nafis’s crime was of a serious kind which would have cost many lives.
He claimed Nafis had plans for terrorist attacks even before he entered the US on student visa and sought maximum penalty.
The Bangladeshi student admitted that he was influenced by the radical philosophy of several of his classmates back in Bangladesh.
"I'm ashamed, I'm lost, I tried to do a terrible thing," he said before verdict.
“I am sorry that I fell for radical Islam. At the same time, I am grateful the explosives were not real," he said.
“I apologise to my parents, to the Americans … and I am requesting the court to forgive me and give an opportunity to start life anew.”
He had earlier
to the judge on Jul 31 seeking forgiveness from his due punishment.
In it, he said he had made a ‘grave mistake’ and that he was mentally depressed.
Nafis claimed stammering in childhood, inability to do well in studies, failing to succeed in the US where he had come to try his luck, and being cheated by someone he loved had pushed him towards terrorism.
He seemed unmoved after the verdict.
His lawyer said they were hoping for a 20-year sentence since Nafis was cooperating with the investigation from the beginning.
“We won’t appeal against the verdict,” Cesare told bdnews24.com.
Consul General Islam said Bangladesh wanted to give Nafis legal aid. “But he rejected and preferred Heidi Cesare.”
Nafis had been a business student at North South University in Dhaka, before leaving to study computer science in the US.
He went there on a student visa last year and took admission in the Southeast Missouri State University. But without completing the cyber security course he had enrolled in, Nafis switched to a technical college in New York.
His family back in Dhaka had alleged that he had been the ‘victim of a conspiracy’.
In 2007, a US court had sentenced Ehsanul Sifa Sadequi, 27, of Bangladeshi origin, to 17 years in prison on similar charges in Atlanta.
Bangladeshi-born Mohammad Mosharraf Hossain, founder of New York’s As-Salam Mosque, was sentenced to 15 years.
Hossain, hailing from Noakhali, was caught in a set up by the FBI for a terror attack.
