A man convicted of terrorism after September 11 was released from prison by a judge who criticized the FBI for relying on an “unsavory” confidential informant in a plot the organization masterminded to blow up synagogues in New York and to shoot the National Guard. airplanes.
U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon released James Cromitie, 58, from prison on compassionate grounds Friday, six months after she ordered the release of his three co-defendants, known as the Newburgh Four, for similar reasons. The four men from the small river town 60 miles north of New York City were convicted of terrorism in 2010.
Cromitie has served 15 years of his minimum 25-year sentence. The New York-based judge ordered that Cromitie’s sentence be reduced to time served plus 90 days.
Prosecutors in the high-profile case said the Newburgh defendants spent months scouting targets and securing what they believed to be explosives and a surface-to-air missile aimed at shooting down planes at the Air National Guard base in Blowing up Newburgh and synagogues in the air. Bronx. They were arrested after allegedly planting “bombs” filled with inert explosives supplied by the FBI.
Critics have accused federal agents of ensnaring a group of men down on their luck following a prison sentence.
In a scathing statement, McMahon wrote that the FBI invented the conspiracy and identified its targets. Cromitie and his co-defendants, she wrote, “would not have devised and could not devise a criminal plot involving missiles on their own.
“The idea that Cromitie was chosen as ‘leader’ by the co-defendants is unthinkable, given his well-documented buffoonery and incompetence,” she wrote.
Cromitie was implicated in the bogus plot by federal informant Shaheed Hussain, whose work has been criticized by civil liberties groups for years.
McMahon called him “most unsavory” and a “scoundrel” sent by the government to “troll among the poorest and weakest men in search of ‘terrorists’ who might prove amenable to an offer of much-needed cash in exchange for committing a fake crime. ”
Hussain also worked with the FBI on a sting targeting an Albany, New York, pizza shop owner and an imam, involving a loan using money from a fictitious rocket sale. Both men, who said they had been misled, were convicted of money laundering and conspiring to aid a terrorist group.
Hussain returned to the public eye in 2018 when a stretch limousine crashed in rural Schoharie, New York, killing 20 people. Hussain owned the limousine company, managed by his son, Nauman Hussain.
Nauman Hussain was convicted of manslaughter last year and is serving a prison sentence of five to 15 years.
Cromitie’s attorney, Kerry Lawrence, said Saturday that he has not yet been able to reach his client, but that Cromitie’s family was very happy.
“I am obviously very pleased that Mr. Cromitie is being released from prison, but I still believe his conviction was entirely the result of government entrapment,” Lawrence wrote in an email. “Given that he was hunted and manipulated by the government informant far more often than any of the other defendants who were previously released, it would have been shocking if Judge McMahon had not granted our motion.”
Calls were made Saturday to the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office in New York City seeking comment.
