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.

READ MORE: NY POST