A New York white supremacist was convicted by a federal jury on Friday of plotting to use a remote-controlled radiation device he called “Hiroshima on a light switch” to harm Muslims and US President Barack Obama.
After less than three hours of deliberation in US District Court in Albany, New York, the jury unanimously found Glendon Scott Crawford guilty of all three charges against him.
Crawford, 51, wearing a gray suit and eyeglasses, showed no emotion as Judge Gary Sharpe read the verdict.
Photo: Reuters
He was convicted of use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to build and use a radiological dispersal device. He was also convicted of distributing information with respect to a weapon of mass destruction.
“Glendon Scott Crawford was a terrorist who attempted to acquire a weapon of mass destruction and to use it to kill innocent members of the Muslim community,” US Attorney for the Northern District of New York Richard Hartunian said.
Hartunian credited the public with giving tips to law enforcement that led to an investigation of Crawford.
At his sentencing on Dec. 15, Crawford faces a mandatory minimum of 25 years to life in prison and a US$2 million fine for the radiological dispersal device charge, up to life in prison for the weapon of mass destruction charge and up to 20 years in prison for the distribution of information charge.
In the trial’s closing arguments, Assistant US Attorney Rick Belliss said the scheme was “very real, very viable and very deadly.”
Crawford, 51, is a Ku Klux Klan member from Galway. The KKK is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a US hate group.
Summing up the five-day trial, Belliss played videotapes in which Crawford said he planned for decades to create the device and unleash it on his enemies — Muslims and the White House.
Belliss said one target was “a certain liberal politician” who Crawford said was in the White House.
Defense lawyer Kevin Luibrand told jurors that Crawford had been entrapped by the government, and he blamed undercover FBI agents for creating the device.
In his closing argument, Luibrand said if “Crawford is guilty of anything, it is proliferating information,” but said the government was responsible for creating what the media dubbed the “death ray” machine.
Crawford went to North Carolina to discuss funding his project with KKK leader Chris Barker, who turned out to be cooperating with the FBI.
Belliss held up a glass-enclosed metal “X-ray tube” that he said was similar to the device, saying it was proof that Crawford did “more than hand out pamphlets.”
Luibrand also played several video clips of meetings between two undercover FBI agents and Crawford, who said he did not have the technical knowledge to make or operate such a device.
“The government is not allowed to encourage someone to commit a crime,” Luibrand said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS