4 Arrested In New York Terror Plot

James Cromite

They jump down hard on people for even thinking about such actions, these guys on the other hand bought the weaponry to shoot down planes and blow up Synagogues, Thankfully it was a sting operation and the FBI swept them all up. The investigation began in June 2008 and after a great deal of work the group was arrested last night.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Four men were arrested on Wednesday in a suspected plot to bomb a synagogue and Jewish community center in New York City and to shoot at military planes with stinger missiles, law enforcement officials said.

A joint release from the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, the FBI and the New York Police Department said the suspects were charged with plotting to detonate explosives near a synagogue in the Riverdale section of New York's Bronx borough.

The men were also charged with plotting to shoot military planes located at New York's Air National Guard base at Stewart airport in Newburgh, New York, with stinger surface-to-air guided missiles, the statement said. Newburgh is about 60 miles north of New York City.

"The defendants wanted to engage in terrorist attacks. They selected targets and sought the weapons necessary to carry out their plans," Lev Dassin, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in the statement.

The four men, identified as James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen, were arrested after buying an inactive missile and inert explosives in a sting operation run by the FBI and other agencies, the complaint said.

New York police arrive at the synagogue that was allegedly targeted

Do Jihad:

'DO JIHAD'

Cromitie said if he died a martyr, he would go to "paradise" and that he was interested in doing "something to America," the complaint said. Last July, he told the informant he wanted to join Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistan-based group Washington designates as a terrorist organization, to "do jihad," according to the complaint.

In October, Cromitie and the other men began a series of meetings at a house in Newburgh to plot their attacks and just last month they selected the synagogue and Jewish community center and conducted surveillance, it said.

The complaint said they bought an arsenal in May that included improvised explosive devices containing inert C-4 plastic explosives and a surface-to-air guided missile provided by the FBI that was not capable of being fired.

As for the military planes:

Stewart International Airport is used by the New York Air National Guard and United States Air Force, according to the complaint, and it stores aircraft used to transport military supplies and personnel to the military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Political leaders responded to the news of the arrests with statements expressing relief.

“This was a very serious threat that could have cost many, many lives if it had gone through,” Representative Peter T. King, Republican from Long Island, said in an interview with WPIX-TV. “It would have been a horrible, damaging tragedy. There’s a real threat from homegrown terrorists and also from jailhouse converts.”

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in a statement: “If there can be any good news from this terror scare it’s that this group was relatively unsophisticated, infiltrated early, and not connected to another terrorist group. This incident shows that we must always be vigilant against terrorism — foreign or domestic.”

For a text of the criminal complaint.