A single 27-year old man, Jose Pimentel, was arrested Sunday by New York Police, as he prepared to build a bomb intended to blow up police cars and troops returning home to their families from Afghanistan and Iraq.   Mayor Bloomberg, in a press conference covered here by FOX NEWS, explained why police moved in for the arrest today:

An “Al-Qaeda sympathizer” accused of plotting to bomb police and post offices in New York City as well as U.S. troops returning home has been arrested on numerous terrorism-related charges.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said police had to move quickly to arrest Pimentel on Saturday because he was ready to carry out his plan.

“We had to act quickly yesterday because he was in fact putting this bomb together. He was drilling holes and it would have been not appropriate for us to let him walk out the door with that bomb,” Kelly said.

The police commissioner said Pimentel was energized and motivated to carry out his plan by the Sept. 30 killing of Al-Qaeda’s U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

27-year old Jose Pimental Intended To Kill Homecoming Troops

“He decided to build the bomb August of this year, but clearly he jacked up his speed after the elimination of al-Awlaki,” Kelly said.   “He appears to be a total lone wolf,” the mayor said. “He was not part of a larger conspiracy emanating from abroad.”

Instead, Bloomberg said, Pimentel represents the type of threat FBI Director Robert Mueller has warned about as U.S. forces erode the ability of terrorists to carry out large scale attacks.

The FBI was briefed on the matter, but declined involvement, an FBI official told FoxNews.com.

Ten years after 9/11, New York remains a prime terrorism target. Bloomberg said at least 13 terrorist plots have targeted the city since the Sept. 11 attacks. No attack has been successful. Pakistani immigrant Faisal Shahzad is serving a life sentence for trying to detonate a car bomb in Times Square in May 2010.

Pimentel, a U.S. citizen originally from the Dominican Republic, Pimentel was “plotting to bomb police patrol cars and also postal facilities as well as targeted members of our armed services returning from abroad,” Bloomberg said Sunday.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/11/20/police-arrest-suspect-in-alleged-terror-plot/

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Filed under: Featured, Inside The KC, Politics by Sonja Eddings Brown, Nov 20, 2011