Judge Upholds Convictions Of Four Men In Bronx Bomb Plot

[hrmjustin]

NY1News

A Manhattan judge has upheld the convictions of four men sentenced to decades in prison for a terrorist plot.

James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen were arrested in 2009 and charged with plotting to blow up two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military cargo planes upstate.

The defense has long claimed they were a harmless group led astray by an FBI informant, but the judge ruled that the government's tactics didn't rise to the level of "outrageous behavior."

Each man was convicted of conspiracy and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

http://www.ny1.com/content/news/187654/judge-upholds-convictions-of-four-men-in-bronx-bomb-plot

[Wilms]

1. I just did some reading on this case.

It was argued that it's yet another case of entrapment by the FBI. Seems that each time the FBI "foils" a plot, it's a plot that they themselves hatched.

Here are a few links I reviewed:

Judge slams sting in Bronx synagogue case

Originally published: September 7, 2011 6:33 PM
Updated: September 7, 2011 6:39 PM
By JOHN RILEY [e-mail]

A Manhattan federal judge Wednesday lashed out at the government for using a sting to recruit four Newburgh men into a phony 2009 plot to blow up a Bronx synagogue as she sentenced the final defendant to 25 years in prison.

"I'm not proud of what the government did in this case," said U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon, echoing comments she has made before as she gave LaGuerre Payen, 29, a Haitian, the same mandatory 25-year term she meted out to three co-defendants in June.

The four were convicted on several conspiracy counts in October. An FBI informant testified about a courtship lasting nearly a year that included financial incentives to lure plot leader James Cromitie and three others into agreeing. The jury rejected an entrapment defense.

http://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/judge-slams-sting-in-bronx-synagogue-case-1.3152375

Newburgh Four: poor, black, and jailed under FBI 'entrapment' tactics

The "Newburgh Four" now languish in jail. Hussain does not. For Hussain was a fake. In fact, Hussain worked for the FBI as an informant trawling mosques in hope of picking up radicals.

Yet far from being active militants, the four men he attracted were impoverished individuals struggling with Newburgh's grim epidemic of crack, drug crime and poverty. One had mental issues so severe his apartment contained bottles of his own urine. He also believed Florida was a foreign country.

Hussain offered the men huge financial inducements to carry out the plot – including $250,000 to one man – and free holidays and expensive cars.

As defence lawyers poured through the evidence, the Newburgh Four came to represent the most extreme form of a controversial FBI policy to use invented terrorist plots to lure targets. "There has been no case as egregious as this. It is unique in the incentive the government provided. A quarter million dollars?" said Professor Karen Greenberg, a terrorism expert at Fordham University.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/dec/12/newburgh-four-fbi-entrapment-terror

Judge gives men convicted in Bronx synagogue bomb plot 25 years in prison but lambasts government
By Robert Gearty / DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

A federal judge meted out a minimum 25-year sentence Wednesday to three men convicted of a plot to blow up Bronx synagogues - but not before knocking the government for provoking the crime.

snip

"The essence of what occurred here is that a government understandably zealous to protect its citizens from terrorism came upon a man both bigoted and suggestible, one who was incapable of committing an act of terrorism on his own," McMahon said, referring to Cromitie.

"It created acts of terrorism out of his fantasies of bravado and bigotry, and then made those fantasies come true," she added.

She said unlike the other domestic terror cases, "the government did not have to infiltrate and foil some nefarious plot - there was no nefarious plot to foil."

At the same time, she said she could not condemn Cromitie and his cohorts strongly enough. "You were not political or religious martyrs," the judge said. "You were thugs for hire, pure and simple."

snip

The fake bombs had been provided by an FBI informant, who enticed Cromitie with promises of cash if he carried out the plot.

McMahon directed some of her remarks directly to Cromitie. "I suspect that real terrorists would not have bothered themselves with a person who was so utterly inept," she said. "Only the government could have made a terrorist out of Mr. Cromitie, whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in its scope."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/judge-men-convicted-bronx-synagogue-bomb-plot-25-years-prison-lambasts-government-article-1.125706#ixzz2cqQslJhf