NEW YORK — A jury Monday found four men guilty of plotting to blow up Jewish targets in New York City and shoot military planes out of the sky, brushing aside defense claims that they were victims of entrapment by a paid FBI informant who befriended them at their mosque.
The four — alleged ringleader James Cromitie, David Williams IV, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen — were arrested in a nighttime raid in May 2009 after leaving cars they believed were laden with explosives outside a synagogue and a Jewish center in the Bronx. Prosecutors called it a “chilling plot” and an example of the danger of homegrown terrorists.
Defenders of the four, all Muslims from the working-class city of Newburgh north of New York, said they would not have been involved in a plot were it not for pressure put on them by the Pakistan-born informant.
“It’s a miscarriage of justice,” said Susanne Brody, the attorney for Onta Williams. She and other defense attorneys said they planned to appeal.
Alicia McWilliams-McCollum, David Williams’ aunt, accused the FBI of “wickedness” in coming to Newburgh and targeting the four.
But prosecutors heralded the convictions as another blow to homegrown terrorists and said it didn’t matter that their car bombs were loaded with FBI-provided duds incapable of exploding or that the Stinger missiles they bought were useless.
“Homegrown terrorism is a serious threat,” said U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. “The defendants in this case agreed to plant bombs and use missiles they thought were very real weapons of terrorism. We are safer today as a result of these convictions.”
The verdict followed eight days of deliberations and several weeks of testimony, most of it by the informant, Shahed Hussain, who gained the men’s confidence by pretending to be a member of a Pakistan-based terror group and then secretly recorded their conversations.
Hours of those recordings were played to jurors, and prosecutors said they showed Cromitie’s hatred of Americans and Jews in particular, a hatred allegedly fueled by the war in Afghanistan. In one meeting, recorded Dec. 5, 2008, a laughing Cromitie tells Hussain he has fantasized about blowing up “something huge,” like a football stadium.
