A San Diego man pleaded not guilty today to child pornography charges filed by federal prosecutors, who declined to comment on media reports suggesting he's linked to the suspect in the Federal Reserve bomb plot in New York City.
Howard Willie Carter II, 36, appeared before Magistrate Jan Adler as an indictment was unsealed charging the defendant with receipt and possession of images of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
Adler granted a prosecutor's request that Carter be held without bail on the grounds of risk of flight and danger to the community. A detention hearing was set for Tuesday.
Carter was arrested after the FBI served a search warrant on his City Heights apartment on Wednesday.
Neither federal prosecutors nor San Diego FBI spokesman Darrell Foxworth would provide further details of the arrest or Carter's possible connection to the New York bomb plot suspect.
On Wednesday, federal agents in New York arrested 21-year-old Quazi Mohammed Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, accusing him of making several attempts to blow up the Federal Reserve building.
Nafis, in the United States on a student visa, allegedly tried to recruit people to help him in the plot, leading him to connect with undercover officers who, unbeknownst to him, supplied him with fake explosives.
The complaint in federal court in New York refers to an unidentified "co-conspirator,'' who Nafis refers to as "Yaqueen.''
