When the FBI learned that a judge was releasing a group of men that were targeted, entrapped, and framed by the Bureau they probably had to try hard to remember the specifics.
The "Newburgh Four" were arrested and tried in the post-9/11 fog in a terrorist sting that a judge now believes to be totally illegitimate.
James Cromitie, 58, and three other co-defendants have been given time served after they were convicted of terrorism charges in New York in 2010.
From the judge:
In a scathing ruling, McMahon wrote that the FBI 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 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.
These were 4 low-level criminal knuckleheads. It was completely ludicrous to think that they could somehow come up with a plan to launch a rocket attack on New York City.
According to the judge, the only reason this became a case against the Newburgh Four is because an FBI informant made up the entire plan.
Cromitie was bought into the phony plot by the federal informant Shaheed Hussain, whose work has been criticized for years by civil liberties groups.
McMahon called him "most unsavory" and a "villain" 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."
Huh.
Judge McMahon said that Cromitie was a small-time "grifter" who was broke and unemployed when he was enlisted in the FBI-driven plot and provided fake bombs to plant in exchange for $250,000 in the "jihadist mission." Cromitie enlisted the other three men to serve as lookouts, according to the judge.
"The three men were recruited so that Cromitie could conspire with someone," the judge said. "The real lead conspirator was the United States. .... The FBI invented the conspiracy; identified the targets; manufactured the ordnance."
You mean that the FBI sends people out to troll for "fed posting," then entraps people by coming up with elaborate and illegal plans that they push on them?
That's so weird.
I mean, it's truly bizarre.
Who would ever expect their government to be involved in something like that?
I'm glad that these 4 men have been given their freedom that was, by all appearances, unjustly taken away.
I hope it's the start of a trend.
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