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New York Terror Plot Suspect Caught on Tape Planning Attack on Synagogues
James Cromitie, the alleged leader of a plot to blow up New York City synagogues, told an undercover informant he wanted to kill Jews and send a message “bigger than the World Trade Center” in two days of secretly recorded talks played for jurors in his trial.
“Somebody needs to send one great big message, bigger than the World Trade Center,” Cromitie, 44, of Newburgh, New York, told the informant, Shahed Hussain, 53, in an excerpt of a recording made while the two were returning from a Muslim conference in Philadelphia in November 2008.
The excerpts played for jurors during the past two days ranged in length from less than a minute to a half-hour and detailed conversations between the two men in cars, hotel rooms and restaurants as Hussain posed as a member of the Pakistan- based terrorist group Jaishe-e-Mohammad, trying to lure Cromitie into planning a terrorist attack.
Today was the sixth day of the trial of Cromitie and co- defendants David Williams, 29, Onta Williams, 34, and Laguerre Payen, 29, before U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in federal court in Lower Manhattan, and the third day of Hussain’s testimony. The trial is scheduled to resume Sept. 7 following the Labor Day holiday in the U.S.
Prosecutors say the recordings paint a picture of an angry Muslim who wanted to “do something to America” -- the phrase Cromitie said to Hussain when they met -- while defense attorneys argue that their clients are impoverished victims of entrapment by a paid government informant who enticed them with food and money.
FBI Request
Hussain, who testified for the third day today, said he began recording his conversations with Cromitie at the request of FBI Agent Robert Fuller in October 2008, about four months after Cromitie introduced himself to Hussain outside the Masjid al-Ikhlas mosque in Newburgh.
At some points during the talks, Cromitie made violent statements without solicitation from Hussain, while the informant sometimes asked questions that elicited such comments.
“The worst brother in Islam is better than 10 billion” Jews, Cromitie told Hussain in one of dozens of recordings made at a Newburgh house that was leased by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and outfitted with audiovisual equipment. “Without hesitation, I will kill 10” Jews “and then I will have to think 20,000 times before I kill one Muslim.”
During one recording made at the Newburgh home, Hussain pointed out the location of potential synagogues that could be targets of a terrorist attack, prompting laughter from Cromitie.
“Oh we gonna get ‘em,” Cromitie says. “We gonna get ‘em. I don’t give a damn, we’re gonna get ‘em.”
Airport Plot
The four defendants, all from Newburgh, were arrested as part of a coordinated FBI sweep on May 20, 2009, and accused of plotting to blow up a synagogue and a Jewish community center in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, and shoot down military planes at Stewart International Airport in Newburgh.
The defendants were indicted on counts including conspiracy and attempted use of weapons of mass destruction in the U.S., and conspiracy to use surface-to-air guided missiles to destroy and to kill officers and employees at the Air National Guard base at Stewart airport. All four face as much as life in prison.
The case is U.S. v. Cromitie, 09-cr-00558, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Dolmetsch in New York at cdolmetsch@bloomberg.net.
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