A man portrayed by officials as the ringleader of a terrorist group known as the “Newburgh Four” has been released from prison after presenting evidence that he had been “framed” by the U.S. government.
On Friday U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon granted James Cromitie, 58, compassionate release from prison nearly seven months after she ordered the release of his three co-defendants.
In her ruling, the judge wrote that Mr. Cromitie and his co-defendants, “would not have, and could not have, devised on their own a crime involving missiles that would have warranted the 25-year sentence the court was forced to impose.”
“The notion that Cromitie was selected as a ‘leader’ by the co-defendants is inconceivable, given his well-documented buffoonery and ineptitude,” she added.
The attorney for Mr. Cromitie, Kerry Lawrence, told the Epoch Times that although satisfied that justice has finally been served, his client should never have been convicted.
“We are very happy that he has finally been allowed to go home and that it has been acknowledged that this government’s misconduct is largely responsible for warranting his release early,” said Mr. Lawrence. “We still believe Mr. Cromitie was wrongly convicted.”
In the motion filed last September in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Mr. Lawrence alleged that the entire plot had been manufactured by law enforcement
The targets, bombs, missiles, as well as plans for the mission, had all been supplied by a federal informant, Shaheed Hussain, who was trying to avoid prison time for a fraud case of his own. In the months leading up to the arrest, Mr. Hussain had become known in Newburgh for driving a flashy black BMW into the poverty-stricken area of New York state.
“In brief, Cromitie, an impoverished small-time hustler, was gulled by the government’s informant Shaheed Hussain to agree to commit horrendous terrorist crimes that he never would have even thought of, let alone attempted or committed, if the government had left him alone,” the filing added.
“The offenses were heinous but never real and were made up by the government in every respect. There was never any actual danger.”
Last year, the three other men convicted more than a decade ago in the high-profile post-9/11 terrorism “sting” were ordered to be released from prison by the judge after her ruling that “the real lead conspirator was the United States.”
Judge McMahon wrote in her scathing 28-page order that Onta Williams, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen were caught up in a scheme driven by overzealous FBI agents and a “villain” of an informant.
“The FBI invented the conspiracy; identified the targets; manufactured the ordinance; federalized what would otherwise have been a state crime … and picked the day for the ‘mission,’” Judge McMahon wrote.
The arrests came on May 20, 2009, after an FBI operation alleged that the men had been plotting terrorist attacks on Jewish synagogues in and around New York, as well as planning to shoot down National Guard planes. All four were sentenced to a mandated minimum of 25 years in federal prison. In her July 27 order, Judge McMahon reduced the sentences of three of the men to time served plus 90 days.
The four men targeted by the informant have all been described as poor and unsophisticated. One of the four suspects, Mr. Payen, who was arrested in a crack house surrounded by bottles of his urine, suffered from “severe mental illness,” according to the judge. It was later revealed that he believed Florida was a foreign country.
The informant offered to pay medical bills for another one of his targets, David Williams, after learning he had a brother who was fighting liver cancer. Mr. Hussain also offered to pay the rent and cover debts for the other men convicted in the case. In addition to supplying all the weapons, Mr. Hussain offered the men hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, expensive cars, and other incentives for their agreement to help him carry out the plot, according to the defense.
At the trial for Mr. Cromitie, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon portrayed him as incapable of masterminding the elaborate plot. “[The government] created acts of terrorism out of his fantasies of bravado and bigotry, and then made those fantasies come true ... Only the government could have made a terrorist out of Mr. Cromitie, whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in scope,” she said.
Attorneys representing the other three men convicted in the case claimed the government’s own bias played a role in the scheme.
“Onta, David, and Laguerre were destitute when they were targeted and entrapped for their race, religion, and working-class backgrounds by a government looking to spread fear of Muslims and justify bloated budgets.”
There is no publicly disclosed FBI rule about confidential informants giving gifts to the targets of the investigation. A spokesperson for the FBI was not immediately available to comment to The Epoch Times.
Mr. Cromitie was incarcerated at FCI Allenwood Medium, where he served over 14 years of his sentence.
Mr. Lawrence said that, although Mr. Cromitie has a long road ahead in reclaiming the time stolen from him, he hopes the judge’s ruling will set a precedent for the FBI’s use of confidential informants in the future.
“We hope that the judges’ language resonates with them (FBI) and leads them to change how the government handles these undercover cases to ensure that this doesn’t happen to anyone else in the future.”
