Dominican-born US citizen, 27, allegedly plotted to bomb soliders, police cars and post offices, said mayor Bloomberg
The New York Police Department has arrested an alleged "al-Qaida sympathiser" who had plotted to bomb returning military personnel, police cars and post offices in the city.
The alleged terrorist, 27-year-old Jose Pimentel, was acting as a "lone wolf" and was taken into custody Saturday, said New York mayor Michael Bloomberg.
A Dominican-born US citizen, Pimentel had spent most of his life in Manhattan, said the mayor, and had been under police surveillance since May 2009.
The suspect was arrested while trying to build the pipe bombs using materials he had recently purchased at a Home Depot store in the Bronx and other locations, the mayor said at a press conference on Sunday night.
Bloomberg said: "The suspect was a so called lone wolf motivated by his own resentment of the presence of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as inspired by al-Qaida propaganda. He was not part of a larger conspiracy emanating from abroad."
Investigators said Pimentel made incriminating statements to a NYPD informant. The statements were said to have been recorded.
New York police commissioner Ray Kelly said Pimentel, who is also known as Muhammad Yusuf, was a follower of radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed by a US drone strike in Yemen in September.
Kelly said the death of al-Awlaki "set him off", but the US authorities first became aware of him two years ago when he was living in Schenectady, in upstate New York. Pimentel had told associates that he planned to travel to Yemen before returning to New York to become "a martyr in the name of Jihad."
Pimentel had become increasingly radical and worried his associates, said Kelly, and had talked about changing his name to Osama Hussein in order to celebrate his two "heroes", Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
Kelly said Pimentel followed instructions from Awlaki's Inspire magazine, in particular a magazine titled 'How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom'. He is said to have bought elbow joints, gloves and Christmas lights.
Awlaki was also the inspiration for Nidal Malik Hasan, the US-born army officer who allegedly killed 13 people and wounded 29 others in a 2009 shooting attack, and for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called "underwear bomber" who attempted to blow up an airliner over the US in December 2009.
Bloomberg said this was the fourteenth terrorist attack targeting New York since 11 September. He stressed the role of the NYPD in terrorism cases involving New York, saying that it had 1,000 officers deployed on anti-terror work in the city every day.
The FBI, which oversees the federal response to terrorism, was not directly involved in the case. Asked why not, Manhattan district cttorney Cyrus Vance said that while the FBI had been informed, his office felt that given the timeline "it was appropriate to proceed under state charges".
Pimentel will face charges including include first-degree criminal possession of a weapon as a crime of terrorism.