A 27-year old convert to Islam accused of plotting to blow up targets around New York has been indicted on several terror-related counts, officials said Thursday. Jose Pimentel, a naturalised US citizen who was born in the Dominican Republic, was arrested in November after being under surveillance by New York police for about two years.
Officials, who described him as a "lone wolf" terrorist and al Qaeda sympathiser but who was not part of a larger extremist cell, say Pimentel plotted to bomb police cars and post offices and kill US servicemen returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to protest the American military presence in those countries.
In an indictment filed Wednesday, Pimentel - who allegedly was building a pipe bomb at the time of his arrest - was charged with criminal possession of a weapon in the first degree as a crime of terrorism, and faces life in prison if convicted. The indictment said he planned to target US military personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, "to force the United States to withdraw its military presence from the Middle East and in retaliation for the presence of the United States military in the Middle East," according to the indictment.
"The defendant possessed an explosive substance, to wit, a pipe bomb, with intent to use the same unlawfully against the person and property of another, and with intent to intimidate and coerce the civilian population, to influence the policy of a unit of government by intimidation and coercion." New York prosecutor Cyrus Vance said in a statement that Pimentel "engaged in a plot to build improvised explosive devices and use them to commit acts of violent jihad."