Vol. 78/No. 14      April 14, 2014

Pimentel, 29, was nevertheless sentenced to 16 years in prison March 25 after accepting a plea bargain. His alternative was to go to trial as a media-branded “terrorist” facing conspiracy and other “terrorism”-hyped charges and take a chance on spending the rest of his life behind bars.

Pimentel became a target of the FBI-New York Police Department Joint Terrorism Task Force based on his Internet activity.

The frame-up rested on years of entrapment by undercover provocateurs who were paid to pin whatever they could on Pimentel. “The government, including the federal government, investigated Pimentel for more than two and a half years using paid informants before bringing any charges of criminal activity,” Susan J. Walsh, an attorney representing Pimentel, said in a March 28 phone interview. Much of what they got Pimentel to say took place as “informants and my client were high on marijuana while law enforcement watched.” The “smoking gun” finally came when a cop informer goaded Pimentel into helping him build a pipe bomb.

Excerpts from hundreds of hours of recordings made public in 2012 showed how agents constantly egged Pimentel on and sought for years to drag him into wild fabricated plots. “I’m going to build an atomic bomb … Like Einstein,” one of the informers told Pimentel.

Immediately after Pimentel’s arrest in November 2011, Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave a press conference in which he labeled Pimentel a “lone wolf” terrorist and “al-Qaeda sympathizer.”

Like 97 percent of other working people who face criminal charges in the U.S., Pimentel agreed to a “deal,” under threat of much harsher punishment — in this case a life sentence. In exchange for pleading guilty to attempted criminal possession of a weapon in the first degree as a crime of terrorism and waiving his right to appeal, Pimentel was given a 16-year prison term and five years of probation.

The FBI declined to file federal charges against Pimentel, citing misuse of confidential informants and overreaching by law enforcement. The case was then pursued under a seldom used New York state anti-terrorism law. “The FBI refused to turn over any documents, even under court subpoena,” said Walsh.  
 
 
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