Four men who were arrested late Wednesday after allegedly plotting to bomb two New York City synagogues and shoot down nearby military aircraft were bent on waging holy war, but weren't associated with any terrorist organization, officials said Thursday.
David Williams is led by police officers from a federal building in New York, early Thursday, after being arrested on charges related to a bombing plot in the Bronx district of New York City. (Robert Mecea/Associated Press)The four were arrested after planting what they believed were plastic explosives in one car outside the Riverdale Temple and in another outside the nearby the Riverdale Jewish centre, an orthodox synagogue in the Bronx district of New York City. The explosives were fake.
The men вЂ" James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen вЂ" also planned to shoot military planes at the New York Air National Guard base at Stewart Airport in Newburgh with Stinger surface-to-air guided missiles, authorities said.
They were charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction within the United States and conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles, the U.S. attorney's office said. If found guilty, the men face life imprisonment terms.
"They stated that they wanted to commit Jihad," police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at a news conference outside the Riverdale Temple. "They were disturbed about what happened in Afghanistan and Pakistan, that Muslims were being killed."
Kelly quoted one of the men as saying, "If Jews were killed in this attack … that would be all right."
All four men were Muslims and hailed from Newburgh, N.Y. The defendants are due in federal court later Thursday in suburban White Plains, N.Y.
Informant infiltrated group last June
New York Senator Charles Schumer said if there can be any good news out of this case it's that "the group was relatively unsophisticated, penetrated early and not connected to any outside group."
An FBI informant gave the men inert plastic explosives and inactive surface-to-air missiles. The informant first contacted Cromitie in June 2008. Cromitie told the informant that his parents lived in Afghanistan before he was born and that he was upset that Muslim people were being killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan by U.S. military forces, officials said.
James Cromitie, right, is led by police officers from a federal building in New York, early Thursday. (Robert Mecea/Associated Press)Cromitie told the informant that he wanted to "do something to America," prosecutors said.
From October 2008, onward, the informant met regularly with the four men at a house in Newburgh otufitted with hidden federal surveillance cameras.
Beginning this April, the four men selected the synagogue and the community centre they intended to hit, prosecutors said in a criminal complaint. They also conducted surveillance of military planes at the Air National Guard Base, the complaint said.
Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, issued a statement praising law enforcers "for their efforts in helping to prevent any harm to either Jewish institutions or to our nation's military."
"We repeat the American Muslim community's repudiation of bias-motivated crimes and of anyone who would falsely claim religious justification for violent actions," the statement said.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a Jewish human rights group, said in a statement that the plot "is dramatic proof that the dangers from such fanaticism have not passed and that American Jews must maintain their vigilance."
With files from The Associated Press