A man convicted in a post-9/11 terrorism sting was ordered freed from prison by a judge who criticized the FBI for relying on an “unsavory” confidential informant for an agency-invented conspiracy to blow up New York synagogues and shoot down national guard planes.
Critics have accused federal agents of entrapping a group of men who were down on their luck after doing prison time. The US district judge Colleen McMahon on Friday granted James Cromitie, 58, compassionate release from prison six months after she ordered the release of his three co-defendants, known as the Newburgh Four, for similar reasons.
The four men from the small river city 60 miles north of New York City were convicted of terrorism charges in 2010.
In a scathing ruling, McMahon wrote that the FBI had invented the conspiracy and identified the targets. Cromitie and his co-defendants, she wrote, “would not have, and could not have, devised on their own” a criminal plot involving missiles.
“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 was bought into the phony plot by the federal informant Shaheed Hussain, whose work has been criticized for years by civil liberties groups.
“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.”
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Article URL : https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/20/newburgh-four-james-cromitie-ordered-released