U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon on Friday granted James Cromitie, 58, compassionate release from prison, six months after the other three members of the ‘Newburgh Four’ were freed. The group was arrested in 2009 on charges of conspiracy to bomb Jewish buildings in New York and shoot down National Guard planes.
The group was convicted in 2011 and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison.
Last July, Judge McMahon ordered the other three conspirators released on the grounds that they had been manipulated into the plot by the FBI.
According to the Associated Press, prosecutors in the high-profile case said the Newburgh defendants spent months scouting targets and securing what they thought were explosives and a surface-to-air missile. They were arrested after allegedly planting “bombs” that were packed with inert explosives supplied by the FBI.
In her ruling, McMahon denounced "overexcited FBI agents and unreliable covert informants" as the basis for the original conviction, saying that the FBI had targeted men down on their luck after serving prior sentences.
She likewise denounced the covert informant himself, Shaheed Hussain, who had been tasked with infiltrating mosques to identify potential terrorists, calling them "most unsavory villains" sent by the government to "troll among the poorest and weakest of men for ‘terrorists’ who might prove susceptible to an offer of much-needed cash in exchange for committing a faux crime."
Hussain has drawn significant criticism for his work in another case, targeting an Albany pizza shop owner and Imam, in which he presented himself as loaning money from a fake missile sale. The two men were both convicted of money laundering and conspiring to aid a terrorist group.
“The 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 wrote.
Cromitie’s attorney, Kerry Lawrence, said that while he had not yet been able to contact his client, Cromitie’s family was very happy with the ruling.
“I’m obviously thrilled that Mr. Cromitie will be released from prison, but still believe that his conviction was entirely the product of government entrapment,” Lawrence wrote in an email. “Seeing as he was hounded and manipulated by the government informant way more than any of ... the other defendants who were previously ordered released, it would have been shocking if Judge McMahon didn’t grant our motion.”
Calls seeking comment were made Saturday to the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office in New York City.