New York: A “lone wolf Al Qaeda sympathiser” who plotted to bomb police cars and postal facilities in Manhattan as also US soldiers was arrested as he was preparing to create working explosives, officials said. Jose Pimentel, 27, described as a “lone wolf” with no ties to international groups, planned to carry out a one-man terror spree in retaliation for the US killing of Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in September, according to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. “He was a reader of Al Qaeda’s slick online magazine Inspire – and inspire him it did,” New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. But Pimentel was not part of a larger terrorism plot. “He appears to be … a lone wolf.” Pimentel’s was the 14th terror attack thwarted by the New York Police since the 9/11 attacks, the mayor said, and justifies the city’s counter-terrorism efforts.
His intended targets were US military personnel who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as US postal facilities and police in New York and Bayonne, New Jersey, officials said.
An unemployed native of the Dominican Republican who is a US citizen, Pimentel even talked about changing his name to Osama Hussein – in honor of two of his now deceased idols, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, he said. (IANS)