Four men arrested in the US on charges of plotting to bomb a synagogue and shoot down military planes were expected to appear in court yesterday.
Officials said the arrests came after a nearly yearlong undercover operation that began in Newburgh, about 110km north of New York.
James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen, all of Newburgh, were charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction within the US and conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles, the US attorney’s office said.
Three of the defendants are US citizens and one is of Haitian descent, officials said.
The men had planned to detonate a car with plastic explosives outside a temple in the Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale and to shoot military planes at the New York Air National Guard base at Stewart Airport in Newburgh with Stinger surface-to-air guided missiles, authorities said.
The defendants planned to “destroy a synagogue and a Jewish community center with C-4 plastic explosives,” Acting US Attorney Lev Dassin said.
The religious targets were the Riverdale Temple, founded in 1947, and the Riverdale Jewish Center, authorities said.
The defendants, in their efforts to acquire weapons, dealt with an informant acting under law enforcement supervision, authorities said. The FBI and other agencies monitored the men and provided an inactive missile and inert C-4 to the informant for the defendants, a federal complaint said.
Last June, the informant met Cromitie in Newburgh and Cromitie complained that his parents had lived in Afghanistan and he was upset about the war there and that many Muslim people were being killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan by US military forces, officials said.
Cromitie also expressed an interest in doing “something to America,” they said in the complaint.
In October, the informant began meeting with the defendants at a Newburgh house equipped with concealed video and audio equipment, the complaint said.
Beginning last month, the four men selected the synagogue and the community center they intended to hit, it said. They also conducted surveillance of planes at the Air National Guard Base, it said.
The suspects were arrested on Wednesday night, shortly after planting a mock explosive device in the trunk of a car outside the Riverdale Temple and two mock bombs in the backseat of a car outside the Jewish Center, authorities said.
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