Judge Rebukes F.B.I. and Orders Release of Man in ‘Newburgh Four’ Case
A federal judge on Friday ordered that a New York man be freed from prison because a “most unsavory” government informant had duped him into an “F.B.I.-orchestrated conspiracy” focused on attacking an upstate Air Force base and Jewish sites in the Bronx.
The scathingly worded decision by the judge, Colleen McMahon, granting the man, James Cromitie, “compassionate release” was the latest twist in the case of four Hudson Valley men who were convicted of terrorism charges in 2010 despite arguing that they had been entrapped.
In July, Judge McMahon, of Federal District Court in Manhattan, ordered the release of Mr. Cromitie’s co-defendants, Laguerre Payen, David Williams and Onta Williams, for the same reasons. The men, the so-called the Newburgh Four, had each been sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2011.
As with the others, the judge’s order called for Mr. Cromitie’s sentence to be reduced to time served plus 90 days. The order did not reverse his conviction.
Mr. Cromitie’s lawyer, Kerry Lawrence, said on Friday that he had not yet discussed the judge’s order with his client. Granting Mr. Cromitie compassionate release, Mr. Lawrence said, was “at least some kind of vindication for what we believe was a tragic miscarriage of justice.”
The F.B.I. declined to comment on the judge’s order, as did a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, which prosecuted Mr. Cromitie and the others.
Calling the case “notorious,” Judge McMahon wrote that “nothing about the crimes of conviction” had been of the “defendants’ own making.”
Mr. Cromitie was portrayed at trial as the key player in the bogus plot, having been recruited by Shahed Hussain, a longtime F.B.I. informant whom Judge McMahon called “most unsavory” and a “villain.” Mr. Hussain later gained notoriety as the owner of a limousine company that rented a flawed vehicle to a group of partygoers in 2018, leading to 20 deaths.
In the Newburgh case, Judge McMahon wrote, Mr. Hussain’s role was to infiltrate upstate mosques and identify potential terrorists. Mr. Cromitie, who met Mr. Hussain in a mosque parking lot, “pretended to be” a potential terrorist despite actually being a “small time grifter and petty drug dealer with no history of violence,” the judge wrote.
Mr. Hussain, Judge McMahon continued, wooed Mr. Cromitie “with promises of both heavenly and earthly rewards, including as much as $250,000, if he would plan and participate in, and find others to participate in, a jihadist ‘mission.’”
After waffling for months, the judge wrote, Mr. Cromitie, “unemployed and broke,” contacted Mr. Hussain and “agreed to participate in a ‘mission.’” He then recruited his co-defendants to be lookouts “while he planted ‘bombs’ manufactured by the F.B.I.” at a synagogue and a Jewish community center in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, the judge wrote.
“The three men were recruited so that Cromitie could conspire with someone,” Judge McMahon wrote. “The real lead conspirator was the United States.”
In addition to the Bronx targets, the plan involved firing Stinger missiles at military planes at Stewart Air Force Base near Newburgh.
“The F.B.I. invented the conspiracy; identified the targets; manufactured the ordnance,” Judge McMahon wrote, adding that officials had “federalized” the charges — ensuring long prison terms — by driving several of the men into Connecticut to “view the ‘bombs.’”
Mr. Hussain, who is believed to be living in Pakistan, could not be reached for comment. Last May, his son, Nauman, was convicted of 20 counts of second-degree manslaughter in the limousine crash and subsequently sentenced to five to 15 years in state prison.
Prosecutors had argued against Mr. Cromitie’s release, but Judge McMahon rejected those arguments. The time he had spent in prison, she wrote, was “more than sufficient” to “promote respect for the law.”
She continued that what undermined respect for the law in the case was sending a “villain” like Mr. Hussain 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.”
