"FBI-Orchestrated Conspiracy": Judge Orders Release of 3 of Newburgh 4 Tied to Fake NY Bomb Plot

this is democracy Now democracynow.org The War and Peace report I'm Amy Goodman a federal judge has ordered the release of three New York men who were sentenced to 25 years in prison for their role in a government orchestrated bombing plot the men who were all black and Muslim converts became known as the Newberg four they were convicted in 2010 and sentenced to 25 years in prison for placing what they thought were bombs in a New York synagogue supporters of the men have long argued they were entrapped by the government on Thursday U.S District Judge Colleen McMahon issued a stunning ruling ordering the compassionate release of three of the four men in her ruling she wrote quote 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 how however they were in actual reality hapless easily manipulated penurious Petty criminals McMahon said the men were not terrorists but quote impoverished small-time grifters and drug users street level dealers who could use some money she wrote the FBI invented the conspiracy identified the targets manufactured the ordinance unquote the FBI has relied on an informant who was involved in several other high-profile entrapment cases within the Muslim Community democracy now has closely followed the case of the Newberg four since 2010 when democracy Now is Anjali Comet and honey Masood and Jackie suen of big noise films traveled through Muslim communities in New York and New Jersey to track the Newburgh case and two other entrapment cases in October 2010 democracy Now aired a special investigation into these cases this clip begins with Anjali comet on May 20th 2009 four African-American men from the city of Newburgh New York were arrested outside a synagogue in the Bronx known as the Newberg four they made national headlines as Stark examples of homegrown Terror prosecutors described the suspects as extremely Violent Men Who embraced every opportunity for terrorism more than a year after their arrest the Newberg four are now facing trial in Manhattan for conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and anti-aircraft missiles but the cases raised serious questions about the government's role in creating and then foiling fake Terror plots the suspects were duped the bombs and missile were fake supplied by the FBI and NYPD Alicia McCollum is the aunt of David Williams one of the Newberg four since his arrest she's tried to mobilize support for her nephew taking the train to the first day of the trial in August she's visibly upset I was Restless last night I couldn't even sleep you know it was just so much you know you think about the family and what you're getting ready to go through and it's like this whole year fighting for the case and I was like finally happening we're going to trial and just worry you know that the government you know want to make a case so bad that my nephew can go away for life so it's just been like heavy on my mind last night very heavy like the other members of the Newberg four 29 year old David Williams lived in the economically devastated city of Newburgh and it served prison time on drug charges and Petty criminal offenses all four men were converts to Islam and one of them La guerrepayen is a haitian-born immigrant and a paranoid schizophrenic Alicia says she was shocked when she heard that these four men were being called terrorists that was an excerpt from the 2010 democracy Now investigation by Anjali Comet and Jackie suen Alicia McWilliams McCullum went on to directly accuse the government of entrapping her nephew this is entrapment you want to send informed into a Providence Community the most impoverished County to do your trickery you ain't stumbled upon a cell nobody didn't tell you that someone was plotting to do anything you created a crime that was Alicia McWilliams McCullum speaking in 2010 she died last year after fighting for over a decade for the release of her nephew David Williams and the other members of the Newberg four well David Williams onto Williams legare payan will now be released within 90 days after last week's stunning judicial ruling we're joined Now by two lawyers who are part of the Coalition for civil freedoms which was founded in 2010 to challenge preemptive prosecution and the post-9 11 targeting surveillance and criminalization of Muslim communities Kathy Manley is legal directive is legal director for the Coalition for civil freedoms and Stephen Downs is the chair of the coalition's board of directors former Chief attorney for the commission on judicial conduct in New York state Stephen downs and Kathy Manley welcome to democracy Now Kathy Manley why don't we start with you the significance of this ruling Yesterday by the federal judge tell us exactly what she said and how this came about after what it's been over well over a decade yeah thanks Amy thanks for having us um it was at first I got to say it was so poignant to hear Alicia's voice because she was at the heart of the support for these men all these years she was she brought a lot of us together she inspired us and when we filed this motion she was still alive and we really really wanted her to see this to see them get released and unfortunately that wasn't to be hopefully she's up there smiling but this is a significant ruling this was a wonderful decision it took a year and a half to happen but we're so happy that the judge was she always understood this case was unfair she called it the unterrorism case from day one and she always understood that the 25-year mandatory minimum sentence was way too harsh and but there was nothing she believed there was nothing she could do about it because basically there is no entrapment defense in the law and I can talk about that if I have time but um there was no way for her um to avoid doing this she believed and when we filed this motion that gave her an opportunity in a compassionate release motion to say this sentence is too harsh and she did say so um and and it is a wonderful ruling because it shows that the government created this entire case you know the judge is saying this this is what we've been saying all along she couldn't say it was entrapment because there's no entrapment defense the law doesn't consider this entroutment but it is entrapment it's the classic definition of entrapment and um we're just really grateful that she understood the unfairness of this case and now they will be released Stephen Downs if you can lay out the case for us and also let's be clear that the judge judge Colleen McMahon is the original judge right she has basically reversed her decision yeah thank you Amy for having us on uh this is a wonderful uh democracy now has stood with us for years in uh calling out the unfairness of this case uh and I think people were onto it very early uh what what simply happened was that the uh government sent down their their key man Shahid Hussein who had entrap people up in Albany and had nothing better to do with him so they sent him down to hang out in a mosque in Newburgh and the mosque very quickly caught on to him that he was a phony in a government informant and they kicked him out so he went out into the parking lot and began to talk to anybody he could find so let's do Jihan let's get involved I'm incredibly Rich I've got money money money and he hooked some guy who was uh comedy who got interested in this not because I think he was at all interested in uh Jihad but because he was interested in the money and they talked and off and on and comedy backed out after a while and then they uh Shahid Hussain realized that he was going to lose this fish that he had hooked unless he upped it and so he came back to him with an offer saying uh we I'll pay 250 000 dollars um and he later tried to deny that in a lie and the government allowed him to do that but he there's a tape recording I was actually making that offer 250 000 dollars uh and so they decided to go ahead with this uh plot I believe Comedy All Along intended to try to get the money and not to do anything not to harm anybody because that was not his nature just before they uh plot was to go down a few weeks before the government suddenly realized that they wanted more people they wanted to entrap larger numbers it wouldn't look good if they were just entrapping one person so they told chromity he needed uh some Lookouts and so he went out and hired and and uh recruited these three uh young kids who just needed money and in one case certainly in David Williams case he he desperately needed the money uh to get his uh brother a liver transplant um and so they they joined in for a very brief time and uh then the whole thing came down on top of them there was I think never any doubt that the whole purpose of this was the government trying to buy crime with money offering money to get the crime it had nothing to do with terrorism it had nothing to do with protecting a community against group of people what I find really offensive about it was that they then took these entrapment cases and turned them on the Muslim Community and used it to generate hatred against the Muslim Community by making all sorts of lies and exaggerated statements about what the case was about they became a purveyor of hate really against the Muslim Community and the government has absolutely no business doing that so that's how it happened in 2014 HBO aired the documentary The Newberg sting which featured secret recordings of conversations between the undercover FBI informant shahad Hussein and James cromedy one of the men who became part of the Newberg four you have to listen really carefully because some of the audio can be hard to understand the clip begins with James cromedy only the three of us would have no jobs but actually can be fair we already do all this huh we ain't got no money in our parking lot how you doing this field look at me bro how do you think they feel if these brothers are doing for money I don't need them I talked to them already they already knew okay it is for for Allah and that's all it is and if they won't need for money or bring us or they're they think they're going to make any money or oranganas please do not because this is Jihad they can use the money though so and that's FBI informant Shahid Hussein and James cromedy one of the men who became part of the Newberg for Kathy Manley if you can talk about who the FBI informant was the fact that he had what he had fled Pakistan perhaps wanted for murder he didn't want to be deported so he was desperate to entrap these men or do what the FBI wanted yeah he was he was at one point wanted for murder in Pakistan I don't know the details of that but after having seen his trajectory in the U.S it's a a long trail of slime like he just kept ripping people off conning people tricking people out of their money and then eventually was caught in um a case where he was defrauding the DMV he was getting people fake driver's licenses working with the corrupt DMV employee and the FBI was going to send him to prison and then Deport him to Pakistan but instead they gave him an opportunity to work for them in Albany in our case the case of Yasin RF and Muhammad Hussein and he did very successfully wrongfully prosecute them very you know he's so deceptive and slimy and they ended up getting convicted and sentenced to 15 years and we thought this guy is so dishonest and every the jury hated him they probably won't use him again but sure enough we found out they used him in the Newburgh case and they used him in other cases the FBI loves this guy and after the Newburgh case they used him in the Khalifa Aquila case in Pittsburgh and that was featured in the documentary tier by lyric Cabral and David Sutcliffe uh and that um that actually featured the clip of the two of shahad Hussain offering James comedy the 250 000 when he didn't realize he was being recorded um so this guy then he went on to form this limousine company in the Albany the capital region and that was very tragically the limousine that killed 20 people in Schoharie County in 2018 and he was in Pakistan at that point letting his son run the company and basically telling him how to do it telling him don't worry if the brakes don't work it doesn't really matter we don't care and uh his son is now doing 5 to 15 year sentence while he sits in Pakistan hanging out with his super rich brother Malik who kind of destabilized the government Pakistan so this guy has a long history so um Stephen Downs let's end with you you have three of four of the Newberg four going to be released within 90 days compassionate release what happens with chromaty the fourth and then the fact that this FBI informant who did uh sting operation in in Albany the four ticks five Pittsburgh does this all begin to unravel these cases well first of all I just saw a letter from comedies uh lawyer that he's sending to the court asking to be appointed to represent him so I'm pretty sure that the comedy is going to make a move to also uh be released um of course this case is different than the others all the cases are slightly different so he will have to present that to the court but I think it looks pretty good that the judge will grant that um in terms of the second part of that uh we there's a lot of cases that look like this case this is a particularly clear dramatic example of it but this was the government's standard uh operating procedure uh right after 9 11. they were out there going to create as many terrorists as they could uh to show the gov the public I think that they were on the job that they knew what they were doing that they were keeping America safe and if they couldn't find any real terrorists and they couldn't there really weren't any real terrorists around they had to create them and that's what they did they created these terrorists so we had a lot of cases out there the Fort Dix five has won the Holy Land five is another case uh office Siddiqui is another case uh we you can go down a whole long list of these cases and some of them and and particularly the Holy Land five in the Newberg and the fort takes five uh have essentially life sentences they will probably die in jail so there's a really high priority on us trying to get these cases out these people out and so we're going to really need a lot of work to go in there and uh start to try different theories to get them out this case is a godsend to us it really underlies the whole hypocrisy of the government's position and allows us to argue now in these other cases the same thing happened here this is no different you just have to look at the facts and realize that these people were set up uh so I I'm I see our work is cut out for us now um the this particular case shows the way it may not be through compassion release motions you may have to try other strategies but I think in a way what it does is it breaks the um the assumption that these cases were real cases uh it shows that the government had a policy of creating cases when they couldn't find any real cases and then pretending that they were real cases and demonizing the Muslim Community in the meantime so that's what we're going to have to work on I I think over the next few years well we want to thank you both for being with us Stephen Downs chair of the board for the Coalition for civil freedoms former Chief attorney of the commission on judicial conduct in New York state and Kathy Manley legal director for Coalition for civil freedoms

Channel: Democracy Now!

Views: 319,950

Keywords: Democracy Now, Amy Goodman, News, Politics, democracynow, Independent Media, Breaking News, World News

Id: HxEDXrw1RJU

Length: 17min 36sec (1056 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 31 2023