Bronx terror plot: Ex-cons ‘doing jihad’

The stranger, known as “Maqsood,” hung around the Masjid al-Ikhlas mosque in Newburgh, N.Y., identifying himself as a “wealthy radical” and inviting young men to join him in “doing jihad.” He found a willing accomplice in James Cromitie, aka Abdul Rahman, who had converted to Islam in prison. With three other Muslim men, authorities say, Cromitie made plans with Maqsood to bomb a Bronx synagogue and a nearby Jewish center, and shoot down military planes with Stinger missiles. But last week, said Michael Wilson in The New York Times, this alleged terror plot collapsed when police arrested the four participants, all of whom are U.S. citizens and ex-convicts. Ostensibly a member of a Pakistani terror group with links to al Qaida, Maqsood was actually a government informant named Shahed Hussain, who helped the FBI put the men under surveillance. Cromitie, prosecutors said, told Maqsood that he hated Jews and hoped “do something to America,” but that “the best target”—the World Trade Center—“was hit already.”

Get ready for the usual protests from bleeding hearts and Islamic organizations, said the New York Daily News in an editorial. The four accused men, their defenders will cry, were just low-level criminals who knew nothing of Stinger missiles or jihad, and were entrapped by the FBI. But when they were arrested, Cromitie and friends had already planted two “bombs” in cars outside Bronx synagogues, and were en route to an Air Force base to shoot down planes with their Stingers. Little did they know that the explosives and missiles they’d bought were dummies, rendered inert by the authorities. Clearly, these guys “fashioned themselves as Islamic radicals,” and were eager to kill Americans. They belong in jail.

When this “bogus” case gets to court, it will fall apart, said Robert Dreyfuss in The Nation. The alleged masterminds were all “losers, ex-cons, and drug addicts. Al Qaida they’re not.” But by all accounts it was Hussain, the FBI informant, who “whipped up their violent tendencies and their hatred of Jews, cooked up the plot, incited them, arranged their purchase of weapons, and then had them busted.” Had he not “entrapped them,” these dupes would never have dreamed of buying Stinger missiles or bombs. But the government still wants the public to believe that “the homeland is under attack,” and if it means turning common street thugs into terrorists and cooking up nonexistent threats, so be it. We’ve all “seen this movie before.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up