NEW YORK, Oct. 6 (UPI) -- The trial of a New York man charged with planning to bomb a synagogue and Jewish community center now is in the hands of a jury.
Prosecutors said James Cromitie and three other men -- David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen -- conspired to blow up the Riverdale Temple and Riverdale Jewish Community Center in Riverdale, N.Y, as well as planned to launch surface-to-air missiles at a U.S. National Guard facility in New York, CNN reported Wednesday. The four Newburgh, N.Y., men were arrested in May 2009.
The panel was to begin deliberating Wednesday after spending six weeks listening to testimony and undercover tapes made by Shahed Hussain, an FBI informant. On the tapes, Cromitie could be heard telling Hussain, "I am a soldier in America but not for America," and discussing needing a fatwa, or decree, from an imam.
While prosecutors said Cromitie and the three other men spoke extensively about their plans to Hussain, posing as an agent of a Pakistan-based terrorist group, defense attorneys said the informant's testimony was "garbage," CNN reported.
"The bottom line is when it comes to Hussain's testimony, it's worthless. It's garbage," Cromitie's lawyer, Vincent Briccetti, told the jury. "He lied to you."
"The defendants thought this was real," Assistant U.S. Attorney David Raskin said.
