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Home Front: WoT
16 Years In Prison For Man In NYC Terror Bomb Plot
2014-03-26
[Ynet] An al-Qaeda sympathizer who admitted trying to build pipe bombs in a New York City basement and aiming to blow up cop shoppes or military installations has been sentenced on Tuesday to 16 years in prison.

Jose Pimentel pleaded guilty last month to attempted criminal possession of a weapon as a crime of terrorism.

The Dominican-born Mohammedan convert was tossed in the slammer
Drop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un!
 in November 2011. The Manhattan district attorney's office says he was assembling bombs from clocks, Christmas tree lights and other everyday items. He said he wanted to undermine support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Link


Home Front: WoT
New York 'Lone Wolf' Terror Plotter Pleads Guilty
2014-02-20
[An Nahar] A U.S. citizen dubbed a "lone wolf" terrorist and al-Qaeda sympathizer has pleaded guilty to plotting to bomb targets in New York and kill U.S. soldiers, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Jose Pimentel, 29, a Mohammedan convert born in the Dominican Republic, will be sentenced on March 25, the New York district attorney's office said.

The charges carry a maximum sentence of life.

Pimentel was incarcerated
Book 'im, Mahmoud!
 by the bomb squad in November 2011 after being under surveillance by New York police for about two years.

He was accused of plotting to bomb police cars and post offices and kill U.S. servicemen returning from Afghanistan and Iraq to protest the American military intervention in those countries.

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.

He initially pleaded not guilty
"Wudn't me."
. U.S. federal authorities also declined to take up the case, leaving it to the New York district attorney's office to pursue.

Pimentel's attorneys Susan Walsh and Lori Cohen early on described the government's case as "overreaching" and an example of an overzealous and wrongheaded effort to stamp out terror.

According to documents filed in court, Pimentel collected spare parts such as incendiary powder, pipes with drilled holes, electronic circuits, clocks and nails to build pipe bombs.

The prosecution says each of the components was proscribed in a step-by-step guide in al-Qaeda's English-language Inspire Magazine on how to make a bomb designed to maximize casualties.

Officials described him as a "lone wolf" terrorist who was not part of a larger Death Eater cell.
Link


Home Front: WoT
Timeline of Islamicist attacks for New York, 2001 to date
2013-04-19
Barry Rubin, posting over at Yid with Lid, posts an interesting timeline of attacks, planned and foiled, for the New York area since 9/11. When people ask "why would Chechnyan youths come to America and plan terror attacks?", the answer is that of the scorpion to the frog: it's what they do.

Full credit to Barry for the list and a big thank you to the Yid. Barry, in case you're wondering, is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal.
Since September 11, 2001, there have been 18 known terrorist attacks planned in New York City and they all have something in common: the worldview of the perpetrators. In some cases, they were called off by al-Qaeda:

  • In 2002, Iyman Faris, a U.S.-based al-Qaeda operative, planned to cut the Brooklyn Bridge's support cables at the direction of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

  • In 2003, al-Qaeda had planned to release cyanide gas in New York City's subway system and attack other public places.

  • In 2006, Uzair Paracha, a Brooklyn resident, was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison after he was convicted of attempting to help al-Qaeda operative Majid Khan enter the United States to attack gas tanks. Paracha's father worked with al-Qaida to smuggle explosives - including possibly nuclear weapons - into the United States using the New York office of Paracha's import-export business.

  • Dhiren Barot (aka Issa al-Hindi) was sentenced to life in prison by a United Kingdom court in 2006 after pleading guilty to planning to attack several targets both in the UK and the U.S., including the New York Stock Exchange, Citigroup's headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, and the Prudential Building in Newark, NJ.

  • Shahawar Matin Siraj and James Elshafay plotted in 2004 to place explosive devices in the Herald Square subway station in Manhattan.

  • In July 2006, the FBI revealed it had uncovered a plot involving an attack on a PATH commuter train tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey by Islamists, the placement of suicide bombers on trains, and the destruction of the retaining wall separating the Hudson River from the World Trade Center site in the hopes of causing massive flooding in the city's Financial District.

  • Beginning in 2006, four Islamists plotted to detonate the jet-fuel storage tanks and supply lines for John F. Kennedy Airport in order to cause wide-scale destruction and economic disruption in an attack they intended to dwarf 9/11.

  • In a series of three trials spanning 2008 to 2010, eight Muslims were convicted in Britain of attempting to simultaneously detonate explosives in seven airliners traveling from London to several North American metropolises, including New York.

  • Bryant Neal Vinas, of Long Island, New York, traveled to Pakistan with an intent to die fighting against American forces in Afghanistan. In summer of 2008, Vinas spoke to al-Qaeda about targeting the Long Island Railroad using a suitcase bomb that would be left in a car and set to detonate.

  • In May 2009, four Islamists placed what they believed were functioning bombs outside of Jewish targets in the Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale and additionally constructed plans to fire missiles at military transport planes at Stewart International Airport near Newburgh, NY.

  • In September 2009, the New York City subway system was targeted for attack by three individuals supporting al-Qaeda who planned to set off bombs in the subway during rush hour shortly after the eighth anniversary of 9/11.

  • Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-American residing in Connecticut, attempted to detonate a car bomb in Times Square on May 1, 2010.

  • Ahmed Ferhani, an Queens resident born in Algeria, along with Mohammad Mamdouh, a Moroccan immigrant, were arrested in May 2011 in an NYPD operation in which Ferhani purchased a hand grenade, three semi-automatic pistols and ammunition from an undercover detective. NYPD's investigation into the pair revealed their desire to attack a synagogue in New York City.

  • Jose Pimentel, a native of the Dominican Republic and convert to Islam, was charged with plotting to detonate bombs in and around New York City in November 2011.

  • Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis, a 21-year-old native of Bangladesh residing in the U.S. on a student visa, was arrested in October 2012 as he attempted to remotely detonate what he believed was a bomb in front of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in lower Manhattan.

  • Raees Alam Qazi and Sheheryar Alam Qazi, Pakistan-born brothers, were arrested by federal authorities in Florida in November 2012 for charges relating to a plan to bomb popular New York City landmarks including Times Square, Wall Street and city theaters.

  • Jesse Morton, a New York City-based Muslim convert, was apprehended in Morocco and pleaded guilty in February 2012 to conspiring to solicit murder, making threatening communications, and using the Internet to place others in fear, most notably through his website Revolution Muslim.

  • Alessa and Carlos Almonte, both of New Jersey, pleaded guilty in March 2011 to conspiring to murder persons outside of the United States on behalf of al-Shabaab, the Somalia-based, al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group.

  • And even this list doesn't include the 2007 plot to attack nearby Fort Dix by a half-dozen Islamists since that was handled by the New Jersey authorities.
Link


Home Front: WoT
Plotter Of NY Synagogue Attacks Gets 10 Years
2013-03-17
[Jpost] Algerian immigrant admitted to conspiring to bomb synagogues in retaliation for "Jewish mistreatment of Moslems."

An Algerian immigrant to the United States convicted under a rarely invoked New York state terror statute of plotting to blow up synagogues and churches in Manhattan was sentenced on Friday to 10 years in prison.

Ahmed Ferhani, 28, pleaded guilty in December to conspiracy as a crime of terrorism, related weapons charges and other crimes. He admitted to conspiring with another man, Mohamed Mamdouh, to bomb synagogues in retaliation for what he viewed as Jewish mistreatment of Moslems throughout the world.

"This defendant walked far across the bridge to and from terrorism," prosecutor Gary Galperin said. "Now he must stand and watch it burn."

Ferhani, tossed in the calaboose
Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out!
 in May 2011 after he and Mamdouh discussed their plans with an undercover New York police detective, told Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Michael Obus that he was not the dangerous individual described by authorities.

"The government has tried to depict me in the worst light," he said. "My spirit has not been broken, and never will be."

Mamdouh's case is still pending. His lawyer, Aaron Mysliwiec, declined to comment on Ferhani's sentencing.

The case is one of only two brought by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance under the terrorism statute since the law was passed following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The other involves a Dominican-born US citizen, Jose Pimentel, who was also arrested in 2011 after a police informant secretly recorded him as he bought bomb-making materials and planned to target cop shoppes, according to police.

Police characterized Ferhani and Mamdouh as "lone wolf" Islamic fascisti with no known ties to Islamist beturbanned goon groups. They were arrested after purchasing guns, ammunition and what they believed was a live grenade, police said.

Ferhani's defense lawyers renewed their argument on Friday that Ferhani suffered from mental problems that made him an easy target for an overeager detective.

"This was clearly a case of entrapment," his lawyer, Lamis Deek, said following the hearing.

Deek said Ferhani agreed to plead guilty because entrapment is a difficult defense to prove and because the sentence was appropriate for what she said was essentially a weapons case. He faces deportation at the conclusion of his prison term.

City police commissioner Raymond Kelly said in a statement that Ferhani "posed a real threat" to New Yorkers.

Like Ferhani's attorneys, lawyers for Pimentel have argued that the unemployed Bronx man was "prime pickings" for an overreaching police department.

A Bronx gang member, Edgar Morales, was the first defendant convicted under the terrorism statute in 2007, but his conviction was overturned when an appeals court ruled that the statute could not be used to prosecute street gangs.

When attached to certain offenses, the statute functions as a punitive escalator, allowing for harsher prison sentences.

"Today's sentencing marks an important first for local law enforcement officials in New York State," Vance, the district attorney, said in a statement.
The Times of Israel adds:
But Ferhani and his lawyers say his true intention was to sell the weapons on the black market because he was desperate for money. The police recordings also captured him talking about lining up buyers and speculating about how much he might earn.

Ferhani is almost certain to be deported to Algeria after his release from jail. His citizenship applications over the years had been denied because of his past criminal history and mental health problems that included repeated hospitalizations for psychiatric disorders.

Ferhani's case has attracted attention from some civil rights advocates because of the tactics police used to reel him in. An undercover operative befriended Ferhani shortly after his release from a three-month jail term, then gradually steered him into talks about retaliating against Jews and others for the way Mohammedans were treated around the world. The FBI and federal prosecutors who normally join in on anti-terror investigations declined to get involved in this case. A grand jury also declined to indict him and a co-defendant on a top-level terror conspiracy charge.
Link


Home Front: WoT
Muslim convert indicted in NYC match-head bomb case
2012-03-01
NEW YORK - Jose Pimentel, an American Muslim convert accused of building a pipe bomb, has been formally indicted by a grand jury on terrorism charges, authorities said on Wednesday.

Pimentel, 27, will appear in a Manhattan court on March 13 to enter a plea on the charges, which include weapons and conspiracy counts. The indictment was released by the Manhattan district attorney's office.

Pimentel, a Dominican-born US citizen, was arrested in November after a police informant secretly recorded meetings with Pimentel over several months as he bought bomb-making materials and read online instructions on how to assemble them, according to court documents.

Authorities have said he planned to attack post offices, police stations and military personnel in and around New York City.
Link


Home Front: Culture Wars
Dupe entry: Lawmakers Blast Administration For Calling Fort Hood Massacre 'Workplace Violence'
2011-12-08

Sen. Susan Collins on Wednesday blasted the Defense Department for classifying the Fort Hood massacre as workplace violence and suggested political correctness is being placed above the security of the nation's Armed Forces at home.

During a joint session of the Senate and House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday, the Maine Republican referenced a letter from the Defense Department depicting the Fort Hood shootings as workplace violence. She criticized the Obama administration for failing to identify the threat as radical Islam.

Thirteen people were killed and dozens more wounded at Fort Hood in 2009, and the number of alleged plots targeting the military has grown significantly since then. Lawmakers said there have been 33 plots against the U.S. military since Sept. 11, 2001, and 70 percent of those threats have been since mid-2009.  Major Nidal Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, who is being held for the attacks, allegedly was inspired by radical U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in late September. The two men exchanged as many as 20 emails, according to U.S. officials, and Awlaki declared Hasan a hero. 

The chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Connecticut independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, said the military has become a "direct target of violent Islamist extremism" within the United States. 

"The stark reality is that the American service member is increasingly in the terrorists' scope and not just overseas in a traditional war setting," Lieberman told Fox News before the start of Wednesday's hearing.

In June, two men allegedly plotted to attack a Seattle, Wash., military installation using guns and grenades. In July, Army Pvt. Naser Abdo was accused of planning a second attack on Fort Hood. And in November, New York police arrested Jose Pimentel, who alleged sought to kill service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Both Pimentel and Abdo also allegedly drew inspiration from al-Awlaki and the online jihadist magazine Inspire, which includes a spread on how to "Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom."

Rep. Peter King of New York, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said military service members are "symbols of America's power, symbols of America's might." 

"And if they (military personnel) can be killed, then that is a great propaganda victory for al Qaeda," King told Fox News.

King said there is also evidence that extremists have joined the services. 

"There is a serious threat within the military from people who have enlisted who are radical jihadists," King said. "The Defense Department is very concerned about them. They feel they're a threat to the military both for what they can do within the military itself and also because of the weapons skills they acquire while they're in the military."

The witnesses testifying before the joint session include Paul N. Stockton, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense; Jim Stuteville, U.S. Army senior adviser for counterintelligence operations and liaison to the FBI; Lt. Col. Reid L. Sawyer, director of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, and Darius Long, whose son, Army Pvt. William Andrew Long, was shot and killed at an Arkansas military recruitment center in 2009. 

A second private was also injured in the Arkansas attack. Both victims had just finished basic training and had not been deployed. They were outside the Arkansas recruitment center when the shooter opened fire from a passing truck. The shooter, Carlos Bledsoe, pleaded guilty to the crime earlier this year. 

In a letter to the court, Bledsoe said he carried out the attack on behalf of al Qaeda in Yemen -- the group that was behind the last two major plots targeting the U.S. airline industry.

"My faith in government is diminished. It invents euphemisms ... Little Rock is a drive by and Fort Hood is just workplace violence. The truth is denied," Long testified.

King said the web is the driver of the new digital jihad.

"It enables people -- rather than having to travel to Afghanistan to learn about jihad or to be trained, they can do it right over the Internet," he said. "And this is a growing role."

And while Awlaki and his colleague Samir Khan, who was behind the magazine Inspire, were killed in a CIA-led operation in September, King warned against overconfidence that al Qaeda in Yemen was done.

"This is a definite short-term victory for us. There's no doubt they are going to regroup, that there will be others who will be providing Internet data, inspiration to jihadists in this country, instructions on how to make bombs," he said.

While King was heavily criticized, in some quarters, for launching his hearings 10 months ago on homegrown terrorism, the congressman said the joint session shows the threat is legitimate, and recognized as such by other members of Congress.

"To me it's a validation of what I've been trying to do all year," King emphasized. "There's a definite threat from Islamic radicalization in various parts of our society, including within the military, and we can't allow political correctness to keep us from exposing this threat for what it is."
Link


Home Front: WoT
Round-up: Naturalized jihadi charged in foiled New York City bomb plot
2011-11-21
Well done, NYPD Intelligence Department!
(AFP) - New York authorities announced Sunday they had arrested and charged a US Al-Qaeda sympathizer in a plot to build a pipe bomb to kill government workers, elected officials and others.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said 27-year-old Jose Pimentel was targeting police, postal facilities and others and said he was a "lone wolf" without affiliation to foreign terrorist organizations.

City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Pimentel, though not affiliated with an outside group, was a follower of slain radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaqi, who was killed in a US raid earlier this year.

Kelly said Pimentel, a native of the Dominican Republic who was a US citizen, had followed a online magazine from Awlaqi including an article "How to make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom."

Pimentel "talked about killing US servicemen returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, particularly US army and marine corps personnel. He talked about bombing post offices in and around Washington Heights and police cars in New York City, as well as a police station in New Jersey," the police chief said.
AP adds:
The charges accuse him of conspiracy going back at least a year, first-degree criminal possession of a weapon as a crime of terrorism, and soliciting support for a terrorist act.
The New York Times adds more detail:
Mr. Pimentel, who is also known as Muhammad Yusuf, will face charges that include criminal possession of a weapon in the first degree as a crime of terrorism, which is considered an A-1 violent felony.

Mr. Pimentel made incriminating statements to an informant who was working with the Police Department, investigators said, and those conversations were recorded.

"He was in the process of building three pipe bombs," the law enforcement official said. "We weren't going to wait around to figure out what  he wanted do with his bombs. He was in Harlem about an hour from actually assembling the bombs," but had all the "unassembled components ready to go."
Including nails for shrapnel.

And from CNN:
The police commissioner identified the suspect as a follower of Anwar al-Awlaki. Pimental allegedly tried to contact al-Awlaki directly, but never got a response.

Pimentel had been monitored by authorities since 2009 and his extreme positions "made some of his like-minded friends nervous," said Kelly.
I am truly grateful the CIA taught the NYPD all that spy stuff that the New York Times, et al were fussing about a few months ago.
His aim, the police commissioner said, was to show there were "mujahedeen" -- or Islamic militants -- in the city ready to wage "jihad."
And so he has done.
He was arrested at 3:30 p.m. Saturday in an apartment in Washington Heights, a neighborhood in northern Manhattan, after he began to drill holes in the would-be pipe bomb, Kelly said.
Update -- even more from the NY Post, summarized:
The unemployed pothead converted to Islam in 2009 in while living in Schenectady, NY, where he caught the eye of local police. After he started beating his wife to encourage her to join him in conversion, and forcing their child to watch jihadi videos, she took the child and left. Following his return to NYC, his mother threw him out because of his radicalism, so he moved in with an uncle. The Schenectady police tipped off the NYPD, who apparently bugged the uncle's apartment for sound and video,
Somebody got to watch him scrape the sulfur heads off of 700 matches...
put a tap on his computer, and sent an informant
*ring, ring* "Mahmoud the Weasel, at your service!"
to be his friend. Like Santa Claus, the police know where he's been, what he's done, read, and posted on his website since he moved back to New York. Our lad confessed all, insisting that "Islamic law obligated all true Muslims to wage war against the United States."
The wonder being how few have acted on that obligation, and how many of those were lone wolves. You'd think the Muslim community would be trumpeting that with pride.
According to Mayor Bloomberg, this is the fourteenth jihadi plot against New York City since 9/11.
Link


Home Front: WoT
'Lone Wolf' Muslim terrorist arrested in NYC
2011-11-21
The New York Police Department has foiled an alleged terror plot targeting law enforcement and soldiers returning from the battlefield.

Jose Pimentel, 27, of Washington Heights, New York, was arrested yesterday at his apartment. The charges include conspiracy, first-degree criminal possession of a weapon as a crime of terrorism, and soliciting support for a terrorist act. He was to be arraigned later Sunday.

He was believed to be acting as a 'lone wolf', New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said during a press conference tonight. Mayor Bloomberg said Pimentel was 'plotting to bomb police patrol cars and also postal facilities as well as targeted members of our armed services returning from abroad.'

The NYPD's counter-terrorism unit has been tracking Pimentel since May 2009, when he began discussing his terror plans.

Pimentel, an unemployed American citizen originally from the Dominican Republic, had converted to Islam and was allegedly inspired by Al-Qaida - namely radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. He had converted to Islam and was going to change his name to Osama Hussein, the name of his two heroes, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, Mayor Bloomberg said.

The date of his alleged attack was not immediately clear.

Pimentel was reportedly able to build three pipe bombs using instructions found in an article in the online terror magazine Inspire. The magazine featured an article entitled, 'How to build a bomb in the kitchen of your mom.'

He also intended to test the effectiveness of the bombs by placing them in mailboxes and detonating them.

His terror plot intensified from talk to action with the dealth of Awlaki, Inspire's publisher, in September. Commissioner Kelly said: 'What set him off was the elimination of Anwar al-Awlaki on September 30.'

Bloomberg said: 'This is just another example of New York City because we are an iconic city... this is a city that people would want to take away our freedoms gravitate to and focus on.'
Link


Home Front: WoT
Breaking: convert to Islam arrested while making bombs
2011-11-20
In New York City. Lone Wolf. NYPD was on top of it from the beginning. Jose Pimentel, 27, aka Muhammad Yusuf.
Link



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