New York’s latest accused terror plotter is not only dangerous — he’s clueless.
José Pimentel, the suspected al Qaeda sympathizer allegedly caught building a bomb in a Harlem pad as part of a plot to kill US soldiers and their families, suggested cops give him just a slap on the wrist for the crime and set him free, sources told The Post yesterday.
“Am I going to get a desk-appearance ticket?” the Harlem man asked before insisting, “I’m not a terrorist.”
But authorities described the 27-year-old pot-smoking, jobless loner as a deadly threat who, driven by a radical Muslim ideology, was hellbent on killing NYPD cops and military personnel returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the family members who came to greet them.
Pimentel, a Catholic-to-Muslim convert, was “surprised” when cops showed up to arrest him Saturday at an informant’s apartment, where he was allegedly found wearing latex gloves and piecing together a pipe-bomb, sources said.
He had no idea he had been under close surveillance since May 2009, the sources said — even though the informant’s apartment had been rigged with police cameras.
Pimentel, also known as Muhammad Yusuf, allegedly told police he planned to explode the device as a “test” to see whether it worked.
“We just wanted to see what it would do,” he was quoted as saying.
Officials say he planned to set it off outside a police facility in Bayonne, NJ, or upstate.
Sources said Pimentel had been eyeing Bayonne not out of any particular beef with police there but because he figured that if he set if off in New York City, he would be more likely to be caught because of the city’s extensive anti-terror measures.
If the test bomb went off as planned, sources said, Pimentel allegedly hoped to build a bigger bomb for his actual targets.
Pimentel had allegedly bought materials — including nails, sugar, pipes, batteries, matches — at several stores in The Bronx and Manhattan in the past few weeks. There were also Christmas lights, to be used as a trigger
Cops said they moved to bust Pimentel because he had been acting increasingly erratically and they feared he would test his bomb as soon as Saturday evening.
Police have said Pimentel was just an hour away from making the bomb operational.
“There was no question we had to take this case down,” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said yesterday. “This was an imminent threat.”
Federal sources familiar with the investigation said the FBI didn’t take the case because of concerns about entrapment and the level of involvement of the NYPD’s confidential informant.
“Would the [perp] have done this stuff but for the undercover being there?” asked one source.
Pimentel was characterized as a “stoner” who wasn’t a real danger to anybody other than himself, said a federal source.
His mental faculties were also questioned, considering he once tried to circumcise himself, said another source.
Pimentel is being held at the Manhattan Detention Center without bail under maximum security.
His mom, with whom he lived, apologized for her malcontent Muslim son — and said he has to face “justice.”
“I want to apologize to the City of New York,” said a tearful Carmen Rosa, a 57-year-old immigrant from the Dominican Republic. “I’ve been here since 1987, and I’m disappointed with what my son was doing. I love New York.
“I’m sorry for what my son did. I just want to say I love him. I didn’t raise him that way — he changed.
“I want to thank the police,” Rosa added at her Harlem apartment. “I think they handled it well.”
Rosa said that several years ago, she persuaded Pimentel to move back in with her from upstate Schenectady “because I didn’t like the way he was acting.”
She said her son began having “problems” in 2009 as he lost his job, his marriage fell apart, and his ex-wife gained custody of their young son.
Law-enforcement sources said Pimentel’s troubled marriage included him beating his wife after she refused to wear a head scarf and convert to Islam. He also would force their son to watch jihadist videos, the sources said.
Rosa said that Pimentel first became interested in Islam after 9/11 and converted about five years ago.
“He liked religion. He liked being Muslim. He liked to read and write about what happens in the Muslim world,” she said.
Sources said Pimentel had been monitored for his radical views until 2009 by Schenectady cops, who busted him in a credit-card scam case in 2005.
When Pimentel moved to the Big Apple in 2009, Schenectady police alerted the NYPD.
Asked if her son deserved prison, Rosa said. “He did something. I believe in justice, so justice has to do what it has to do. Whether it’s my son or someone else’s son, everybody has to pay. That’s justice.
“I don’t want to see a New Yorker like me dying. For me, this is hard.”
Authorities in Schenectady said Pimentel’s November 2005 arrest involved charges of ID theft and criminal possession of stolen property.
Authorities said that while working at a Circuit City, Pimentel had stolen the credit-card numbers of several customers and used one of them to buy an Apple computer, which was recovered at his home.
He pleaded guilty to the stolen-property-possession charges in February 2006 and was sentenced to five years’ probation.
Additional reporting by Andy Campbell, Laurel Babcock, Josh Margolin, Doug Auer, Daniel Gold and Reuven Fenton