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Tag: bombings
Man Pleads Guilty In New York Terrorism Plot

Man Pleads Guilty In New York Terrorism Plot

By Michael Muskal, Los Angeles Times

A man accused of building homemade bombs to wage jihad in New York City against U.S. military personnel and others has pleaded guilty to a state terrorism charge, officials announced Wednesday.

Jose Pimentel, also known as Muhammad Yousuf and as Yusuf, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of attempted criminal possession of a weapon as a crime of terrorism — a state law passed after the September 11, 2001, attack in New York. He is expected to be sentenced to 16 years in prison but could have received 15 years to life if convicted on the original charge, a high-level weapons possession offense as a crime of terrorism.

“Manhattan continues to be the symbol of much that terrorists hate about the United States, so we remain a principal world target for terrorist attacks, both at home and from abroad,” said Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr.

Jury selection in the case had been scheduled to start Monday.

According to prosecutors, Pimentel, a Dominican immigrant who was raised in the United States and converted to Islam around 2004, had maintained a website with articles praising Osama bin Laden, describing September 11 victims as legitimate targets and listing reasons to “nuke the USA.”

In 2011, Pimentel “crossed the line from violent rhetoric on his Internet sites to building pipe bombs to be used against our citizens,” Vance said when Pimentel was indicted. Pimentel was arrested November 19, 2011.

Prosecutors said Pimentel in the fall of 2011 “collected components to build pipe bombs. … The defendant had pipes with drilled holes; incendiary powder; electronic circuits that would have been used as ignition devices; clocks; and nails that would have been used to as shrapnel upon explosion. Each of the components seized was proscribed in a step-by-step guide in al-Qaida’s Inspire Magazine on how to make a bomb designed to maximize casualties.”

Pimentel was recorded talking about assassinating a judge, killing returning U.S. soldiers and bombing a police station or the George Washington Bridge, officials said. He also talked about targeting Jews.

Pimentel’s lawyers have suggested that he would never have progressed from Web postings to allegedly making pipe bombs if police hadn’t sent a series of agents to engage with him.

Pimentel took the plea offer to avoid the possibility of life in prison, his lawyers told reporters Wednesday.

AFP Photo/Spencer Platt

Twin Suicide Car Bombs Strike Lebanon’s Capital

Twin Suicide Car Bombs Strike Lebanon’s Capital

By Nabih Bulos and Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times

BEIRUT — Twin suicide car bombs ripped through a residential district of the Lebanese capital Wednesday in the latest deadly attack believed tied to the war raging in neighboring Syria, according to official and witness accounts.

At least three people were killed and scores injured in the blasts, which may have targeted a nearby Iranian cultural center.

The strikes — the latest in an escalating series of bombings in Lebanon — occurred during the morning rush hour near a busy traffic circle in the densely populated Bir Hassan neighborhood.

The number of wounded topped 100, according to a Lebanese Red Cross official at the scene. Some reports put the death toll at five.

The near simultaneous blasts were both the result of suicide attackers in explosive-rigged cars, a BMW and a Mercedes, the Lebanese Army said.

Witnesses described a scene of chaos as lethal shrapnel flew in the air, fires raged and body parts were scattered about the streets.

“I was driving in my car when suddenly I heard this huge blast,” recalled Ahmad Lutayf, who said he was almost impaled by a windshield wiper blasted from his vehicle. “I can’t believe I got out in one piece.”

The nearby Iranian cultural center may have been the target, according to initial reports. One bomb detonated about 50 meters from the facility, while the other exploded near an orphanage.

Iran is a major ally of the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Last November, twin suicide car bombers targeted the Iranian embassy in Beirut, killing almost two dozen people, including an Iranian cultural attache, and injuring more than 100.

In Tehran, the official media reported that no Iranian diplomats were killed in Wednesday’s twin blasts.

An al-Qaida-linked group, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, took responsibility for Wednesday’s attack in a message posted on its Twitter account. The same group said it was behind last year’s strike outside the Iranian embassy.

At the chaotic bomb site, scenes of turmoil unfolded in frenzied images that are becoming numbingly familiar in Lebanon, which has become a secondary front of the Syrian war. Paramedics cared for the wounded, firefighters struggled to douse lingering blazes from battered vehicles and jittery Army and security personnel cordoned off the zone.

The ongoing string of bombings linked to the Syrian war has left Lebanon on edge and raised international concern about security in this strategically situated nation of 4 million, wedged between Syria and Israel along the Mediterranean. Lebanon is also home to more than one million refugees from war-ravaged Syria.

The attacks occurred just days after Lebanon announced a new coalition government, breaking 10 months of political stalemate. Wednesday’s attacks seemed to dash hopes that a more stable governing structure would stem the country’s rising violence.

Lebanon is officially neutral in the Syrian war, but various Lebanese factions have lined up on different sides of the almost three-year-old conflict. The war has exacerbated tensions among Lebanon’s Sunni and Shiite Muslim populations.

Al-Qaida and other militant Sunni groups with a strong presence in Lebanon are fierce foes of Shiite Iran and its allies, including Syrian President Assad and Shiite-led Hezbollah, the Lebanese political and paramilitary group. Militant Sunni factions have said they were taking the Syrian battle to the Lebanese homeland of Hezbollah, which has dispatched fighters to Syria to assist Assad’s military.

Wednesday’s attacks, like previous strikes, occurred in a largely Shiite southern district of the capital where support is strong for Hezbollah. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has said the group will never accede to demands from “extremists” that Hezbollah withdraw its forces from Syria.

AFP Photo/Karam al-Masr