Homeland Security’s Worst Nightmare

Yesterday the New York Daily News posted a story about the arrest of a suspected terrorist. The terrorist, Jose Pimentel, was an American citizen, inspired and guided by the internet, and was a follower of Anwar al-Awlaki.

The article reports:

Pimentel, who went by the alias Muhammad Yusuf, told an informant posing as an Al Qaeda sympathizer he would show “there was mujahedeen in the city ready to fight jihad here.”

When the police arrested Mr. Pimentel, he was about an hour away from successfully finishing a powerful pipe bomb.

Mr. Pimentel is an American citizen who was born in the Dominican Republic.

The article reports:

“I don’t know anything,” said his uncle Luis Severino, adding that his nephew moved in with him about two years ago after getting a divorce. “The only change I noticed in him is that he started following the Muslim religion.”

Mr. Pimentel is described as a ‘lone wolf’ in terms of terrorism. A lone wolf is difficult to detect because theoretically he is the only person aware of the terrorist plot he is planning. However, in the age of the internet, I am not sure there really is any such thing as a lone wolf terrorist. At some point, Mr. Pimentel began reading the on-line Al Qaeda magazine INSPIRE. When he was caught, he was using a bomb-making recipe he found in the magazine. Without the inspiration and instruction found on the internet, I am not sure Mr. Pimentel would have been radicalized. The other question I have in this case is, “What mosque did Mr. Pimentel attend and what was taught at that mosque?”

We have always had violent people among us–the unibomber comes to mind–but we seem to be dealing with a different sort of danger here. If we have mosques in this country teaching violence, we need to know where they are and keep an eye on the people who lead them and the people who attend them. I sounds to me as if this was a man who went through a divorce and was searching for his purpose in society. He found it in the idea of blowing up his fellow Americans. We need to look at how he arrived at that point and see what can be done to prevent others from taking that journey.

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