Federal Judge Frees ‘Terrorism’ Suspects While Calling Out The FBI For Its Entrapment-Esque Tactics

Legal Issues

from the gotta-break-a-few-innocents-to-make-a-national-security dept

For years, we’ve pointed out that the FBI is more interested in easy wins than actually securing the nation. And for years, the FBI has maddeningly refused to take our harsh criticism into consideration. It has done its own thing, because of course it has. Who could possibly stop it? A mass violators of rights both domestic and foreign isn’t going to stop doing what it likes to do just because these actions are wrong.

The FBI is fully engaged in the War on Terror. And if that means radicalizing people for the sole purpose of generating bullshit prosecutions, so be it. If anyone can talk the FBI out of basically engaging in entrapment to “protect” the nation from people who never would have posed an actual threat to it, it’s the courts.

But the courts often feel they’re just too dumb to understand the nuances of national security work. And they’re bound by plenty of precedent that instructs them to believe they’re too stupid to ask too many questions during national security related court cases. And, so, the FBI does what it does — that is, create terrorists so it can arrest terrorists — without facing much friction from any of the checks and balances meant to protect citizens from the abuses of government agencies.

Some notable pushback has occurred recently, though. And perhaps this federal court decision will prompt other federal judges to engage in more scrutiny of the FBI’s counter-terrorism efforts, which have mainly been comprised of undercover operatives doing everything they can to turn impressionable people into so-called “terrorists” — people who’ve often done nothing more than try to appease the FBI operatives applying endless pressure on them to board the jihad bus.

Here’s a bit of background on this surprising turn of events, as reported by Jesse McKinley for the New York Times:

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the “compassionate release” of three Hudson Valley men who were part of a group known as the “Newburgh Four” after finding that F.B.I. agents had used an “unscrupulous operative” to persuade them to join a plot to blow up synagogues and bring down military planes more than a decade ago.

The decision, by Judge Colleen McMahon of United States District Court in Manhattan, was scathing in its description of the methods used by the F.B.I. in its pursuit of the three — Onta Williams, Laguerre Payen and David Williams — calling the plot in which they were convicted of participating in 2010 “an F.B.I.-orchestrated conspiracy.”

“A person reading the crimes of conviction in this case would be left with the impression that the offending defendants were sophisticated international terrorists committed to jihad against the United States,” Judge McMahon wrote. “However, they were, in actual reality, hapless, easily manipulated and penurious petty criminals.”

That decision reduces the sentences of three of the accused to time served plus 90 days, rather than the 25+ years they were originally sentenced to. The judge also called out the FBI’s featured informant — Shahed Hussain — as a lifelong federal lawbreaker who only managed to escape punishment because he decided to convert people less deserving of prison time into “terrorists” for the FBI in order to escape being held accountable for his own misdeeds. It also calls out the fourth defendant for being complicit with Hussein in seeking to convert “impoverished small time grifters” into counter-terrorism fodder for the FBI’s “Build-A-Terrorist Workshop” efforts.

While the New York Times does bring the details, it does not bring the actual court order [PDF], despite the fact that anyone with a working internet connection and the willingness to do battle with PACER (or better yet, be loved freely and unconditionally by RECAP [SUPPORT RECAP, YO]) could find, download, and embed this precious stack of PDF paper. Do better, Paper Of Record.

It’s a hell of a read. (And it’s also very hard to read because the uploaded document resembles a ninth generation copy from an all-in-one fax/printer/copier with a nearly empty toner cartridge that was inadvertently put in someone’s pocket and run through a washing machine before being uploaded in “draft” mode [which probably isn’t even a thing you can do] to the SDNY PACER portal. But, hey, what can you do. Obviously the court was restrained by having access to only the infinite amount of funding supplied by taxpayers. Oh well.)

Early on, a pair of sentences lets readers know how it’s going to go for the DOJ:

Defendant’s arguments are persuasive; the government’s are not. The motion is granted.

More to that point:

A person reading the crimes of conviction in this case would be left with the impression that the offending defendants were sophisticated international criminals committed to jihad against the United States. They were, in reality, hapless, easily manipulated and penurious petty criminals.

That’s the national security “win” the FBI tried to obtain: a quarter-century in jail for people deceived by a person far more worthy of a long-term federal sentence than these defendants. There’s no “win” here. If anything, the country is less safe because the FBI wasted time pushing petty criminals towards terrorist acts, rather than pursue those already inclined to do serious damage to America and Americans.

These were the two people instrumental to this so-called “investigation” and subsequent prosecution:

[D]efendant Cromitie, the lead defendant in this case, was the object of a lengthy sting operation conducted by the FBI with the aid of a most unsavory “confidential informant,” Shaheed Hussain. Hussein’s task was to infiltrate upstate mosques (attended largely by members of the Black Muslim movement within Islam) and identify potential terrorists. Cromitie, a small time grifter and petty drug dealer with no history of violence, pretended to be one, feeding Hussein lie after lie about his past and ingratiating himself with the man he believed to be a wealthy Pakistani businessman. Hussain inveigled Cromitie with promises of both heavenly and earthly rewards, including as much as $250,000, if he would plan and participate in, and find others to participate in a jihadist “mission.” Cromitie professed interest in often deeply offensive anti-Semitic and anti-American rhetoric, but backed his words with absolutely nothing in the way of deeds. He strung Hussain along for six months, only to disappear for a long period — so long that the FBI started to move on to other ventures.

Big on words, short on action, and really not all that interested in jihad despite endlessly dangled promises of rewards to be enjoyed here or in the Great Beyond. There’s a footnote attached to the first mention of the FBI’s informant Shaheed Hussain. And it’s quite the ride:

As was revealed on cross examination, in the years prior to his becoming an FBI asset, Hussain engaged repeatedly in activity that constituted various crimes, including bankruptcy fraud, tax evasion, immigration fraud, perjury, and mail fraud. He lied repeatedly to a laundry list of government agencies, from the United States Bankruptcy Court… to the sentencing judge in his criminal case, his Probation Officer, the FBI, the INS, the IRS, the New York State Liquor Authority and the New York State Education Department. He even lied on the witness stand at the trial of this case, putting the Government in the uncomfortable position of not being able to rehabilitate certain aspects of his testimony, or adopt certain of his statements when arguing this case. More recently, Hussain was the owner of a car-for-hire business in Upstate New York that rented a defective limousine — a vehicle that had been ordered out of service following a safety inspection — that hurtled down Route 30 in Schoharie, New York, sending 21 innocent people to their deaths.

If the FBI and DOJ needed a criminal to send away for decades, they already had one. Instead, they turned this criminal into an informant — one that pretty much sabotaged their case from the moment he took the stand.

These two principles combined with the FBI’s worst impulses to result in this miscarriage of justice:

Nothing about the crimes of conviction was of defendants’ own doing. The FBi invented the conspiracy; identified the targets; manufactured the ordnance; federalized what would have otherwise been a state crime (the Bronx “bomb” plot) by driving three of the four men (Onta Williams was not available) into Connecticut to view the “bombs” and “stinger missile launchers” that would be used in the operation; and picked the day for the “mission” (which was filmed in real time so it could be shown on television news the night the men were arrested). On May 20, Hussain drove four men to Riverdale (they had no way to drive themselves); “armed” the “bomb” (because the hapless Cromitie, despite his “training,” could not figure out how to do it); and told Cromitie how to place the device while David Williams, Onta Williams and Payen performed lookout duty. As soon as the fake device was left by the community center door, law enforcement arrested the four men.

That sure as shit looks like entrapment. That defense appears not to have been raised. But, at least for now, the defendants wrangled into fulfilling the FBI’s fantasies with the assistance of the FBI’s preferred federal criminal/confidential information, will be going home, freed from the remainder of the illicitly obtained 25-years sentences these War on Terror warriors felt was worth blowing taxpayer money on, rather than, say, prosecuting the person with the longest existing rap sheet: Shaheed Hussain.

But here’s the downside: this release order follows 14 years of federal prison time already served by defendants who were dragged into a conspiracy not of their own making and forced to “do the time” despite not actually having done much in the way of “doing the crime.”

That’s the real tragedy here: the FBI got away with this for 14 years. And its ongoing anti-terrorist efforts — despite being largely made up of similar sting efforts — are given respect the FBI hasn’t earned by judges overseeing these criminal cases. The release order here compares this bullshit to the ATF’s “stash house” sting efforts: something used to saddle easily manipulated people with hefty prison sentences following “stings” that follow this same pattern. The government pushed, cajoles, and threatens — in almost every case, poor minorities — into “participating” in illegal acts that are concocted, funded, supplied, and enacted every step of the way by government informants, rather than the alleged “criminals,” who likely never would have even considered doing anything like this if it weren’t for the incessant pressure of government employees.

Will this change the way the FBI conducts counter-terrorism business going forward? It seems unlikely. But it will at least give defendants similarly entrapped a plan of action when challenging prosecutions, convictions, or prison sentences. And, if nothing else, it gives three men back their freedom, albeit after exploitative, supremely lazy federal employees robbed them of 14 years of their lives.

Filed Under: entrapment, fbi, newburgh four, own plot, terrorism