A 27 year-old Al-Qaida sympathizer who was planning a terror attack on New York City law enforcement and US soldiers was arrested on Saturday, just blocks away from Yeshiva University.
Jose Pimental, an American citizen from the Dominican Republic, has been charged with conspiracy, first-degree criminal possession of a weapon as a crime of terrorism, and soliciting support for a terrorist act. The convert to Islam was arrested at his apartment in Washington Heights, after being tracked by the NYPD counter-terrorism unit for almost 2 years.
After the death of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-Yemenite recruiter, inspirational speaker and engineer for Al-Qaida, Pimental – who calls himself Muhammad Yusuf – went from allegedly calling for militant jihad against the United States to building bombs for that purpose. He was allegedly planning to use them to attack police patrol vehicles, postal facilities, and war veterans.
According to Britain’s Daily Mail, the plans for the weapons were reportedly culled from an article in the online English al-Qaida magazine, Inspire, which had been published by al-Awlaki. The name of the article was “How to build a bomb in the kitchen of your mom”. Pimental bought supplies for his crude bombs from New York stores in the Bronx and Manhattan, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Pimental was also the webmaster of trueislam1.com, a site advocating jihad and lauding deceased Al-Qaida leader Osama Bin-Laden as “Leader of the Believers”. He is currently being held without bail.