New York (dailynewyorknews) – Authorities arrested a man they claimed was planning to detonate homemade bombs in and around New York, said Mayor Michael Bloomberg, on Sunday evening.
The objective of José Pimentel, 27, became an American military personnel who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as US postal services and the police of New York and Bayonne, New Jersey, according to Bloomberg and New York, Police Chief Ray Kelly.
The suspect was described by Bloomberg as a “supporter of Al Qaeda,” though he is not supposed to have worked with or studied under some of this terrorist organization.
“There is no evidence, he worked with another person,” according to Bloomberg. “It seems … a lone wolf.”
The Commissioner of Police identified the suspect as a disciple of Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American-born cleric who became a top figure of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Pimentel had attempted to contact al-Awlaki directly, but was never answered.
Unemployed from the Dominican Republican who is a U.S. citizen, Pimentel had lived most of his life in Manhattan, with the exception of five years, Schenectady, New York. He had been controlled by the authorities since 2009, and its extreme positions, “he also did some of his friends who feel nervous,” said Kelly.
The Commissioner said that Pimentel also spoke of Osama Hussein to change his name – in honor of his late “heroes”, for a long period of al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden and Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Last August, the suspects decided to bring the plot to bomb. He “raise its speed” after September 30, when al-Awlaki was killed in a U.S. drone attack in Yemen, according to the police commissioner.
After the strike, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula issued a “compliment” which promised to “respond quickly” to the death of al-Awlaki and three others. That threat prompted the U.S. to issue a global alert warning of such attacks.
“We knew that in the last two years, had read a lot of information and talked a lot about the jihadists inflammatory rhetoric,” Kelly said Pimentel. “But it seems that at this stage the death of Anwar al-Awlaki has motivated him to increase his pace.”
Pimentel bought the ingredients for three bombs that he will try to do at Home Depot and other stores, to make informed purchases, so as not to “raise red flags,” according to the Commissioner.
It would have planned to test an explosive device in a mailbox before using them against other targets. Its purpose, said the police commissioner, was to show that there was “mujahideen” – or Islamic militants -. “Jihad” in town ready to fly
He was arrested at 3:30 Saturday in an apartment in Washington Heights, a neighborhood north of Manhattan, after it has started drilling holes in the pipe bomb pregnant, said Kelly. While the authorities he had watched more than two years, they decided to move quickly for fear that the device may explode, according to the Commissioner.
“Behavior of Pimentel became just talk about the actions of such actions – that is, the manufacture of bombs,” said Kelly.
The suspect is accused of having learned to make a pipe bomb after reading an article titled “How to make a bomb in the kitchen with your mother,” Inspire, the terrorist network of Al Qaeda propaganda in English-language network, recruitment and magazine training. The thing that came out shortly before the death of al-Awlaki, for example, said that supporters of al-Qaeda in the West must take matters into their own hands and launch attacks against themselves.
“He was a reader of al-Qaeda online magazine Inspire soft – and he did inspires.” Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, said, “said his desire to attack our men and women … have come from a playbook of Al-Qaeda.”
Vance said his office and other authorities of New York has long been “in communication with federal authorities.” Having said that, Pimentel was arrested by agents of the State and will be tried in the courts of New York.
Specifically, the district attorney announced that his office filed a complaint against Pimentel Sunday of plotting to build a bomb for terrorist purposes, and to have a bomb.
Neither Bloomberg, Kelly and Vance explained, in Pimentel, where he had been detained or when they appear in court.
It was not possible to determine Sunday night if Pimentel had retained a lawyer.
Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/20/us/new-york-bloomberg-announcement/index.html?hpt=us_c2
