By Calvin Palmer
The four men arrested last night for allegedly planning to blow up two synagogues in New York and shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base were petty criminals acting alone, the New York City police commissioner said today.
Speaking at the Riverdale Jewish Center, one of two synagogues targeted in the plot, commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said: They stated that they wanted to commit jihad. They were disturbed about what was happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan, that Muslims were being killed.
“They were making statements that if Jews were killed in this attack and that would be all right — that sort of thing.
“It speaks to our concern about homegrown terrorism.”
James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen were arrested around 9:00 p.m. in an elaborate sting operation after planting what they believed to be bombs in cars outside the Riverdale Temple, a Reform synagogue, and the nearby Riverdale Jewish Center, an Orthodox synagogue.
Once the explosives were planted, the men planned to detonate them remotely and drive to the National Guard base in Newburgh, New York, to shoot down military aircraft with a Stinger surface-to-air guided missile.
The men did not know that the explosives, obtained with the help of an FBI informant, were fake and the missile was incapable of being fired.
Kelly said the men, all of whom live in Newburgh, about 60 miles north of New York City, had met in prison.
Cromitie, 53, who was described as the plot’s leader, had lived in Brooklyn and had as many as 27 arrests for minor crimes both in upstate New York and in New York City. His parents had lived in Afghanistan before his birth and he wanted to do “something to America”.
Three of the four are native born Americans. Payen is a citizen of Haiti.
Cromitie’s sister, Wanda Cromitie, said she was shocked to learn of her brother’s arrest while watching television this morning.
She said she was unaware that her brother may have had extreme political views, and that she had last spoken to him about two years ago when she thought he was working at a Wal-Mart or Kmart store.
“Right now, he is the dumbest person I ever came in contact with in my life,” she said.
She added that as far as she knew, he was not a Muslim, but “they do a little time in jail and they don’t eat pork no more.”
The arrests capped an investigation that began in June 2008, involving an F.B.I. agent who had been told by a federal informant of the men’s desire to attack targets in America. The informant had been cooperating with the authorities since 2002, when he pleaded guilty to taking part in an unrelated fraud scheme and was sentenced to five years of probation.
The synagogues and air base were selected as targets in April.
On May 6, the defendants traveled to a warehouse in Connecticut to obtain what they believed was a surface-to-air guided-missile system and three improvised explosive devices, all of which were actually incapable of being fired or detonated. The men then brought the weapons back to a storage facility in Newburgh.
The plot unfolded Wednesday night as one of the suspects placed what he believed were homemade bombs — each equipped with about 37 pounds of inert C-4 plastic explosives — into separate vehicles parked outside the synagogues. The other three suspects served as lookouts.
“There was a driver who was a cooperator, and there was the individual who placed the bombs in the vehicle, and then there were three lookouts,” Kelly said. “As everyone was going back to the car, that is when the signal was given to the emergency service officers to move in.”
An 18-wheel New York Police Department vehicle — known as a “low-boy” — blocked the suspects’ black sport utility vehicle at 237th Street and Riverdale Avenue. The FBI informer also served as the driver of the suspects’ SUV, Kelly said.
Another armored vehicle arrived and officers from the department’s Emergency Service Unit smashed the blackened windows of the SUV, removed the men from the vehicle, and handcuffed them on the ground. None offered resistance.
Other police officers, along with members of the Joint Terrorist Task Force, the FBI and the state police, were also on hand, and “moved in and took those individuals away,” Kelly said.
The defendants were due to be arraigned in Federal District Court in White Plains, New York, today.
[Based on reports by The New York Times and Associated Press.]
