US synagogue bomb plotters get 25 years prison (AFP)

NEW YORK (AFP) – A US federal judge Wednesday sentenced three men to 25 years each in prison on terrorism charges, but rebuked both prosecutors and the FBI for "questionable" behavior stemming from a sting operation.

The three men -- James Cromitie, 45, David Williams, 30, and Onta Williams, 35 -- were accused of planning to attack two synagogues and to shoot down US military planes.

"There was no pre-existing plot," said Judge Colleen McMahon after a three-hour hearing in federal court in Manhattan.

"The government came upon a man incapable of committing an act of terrorism on his own," she said. "I have never heard anything like the facts of this case."

Lawyers for the three men said they would appeal.

The three, along with Laguerre Payen, who has not yet been sentenced, were arrested on May 20, 2009 after a year-long sting operation led by the FBI and an informant who provided the men with three IEDs (improvised explosive devices), each with 30 pounds (14 kilos) of inert C-4 plastic explosives.

The men were arrested while they were preparing to plant the IEDs near two synagogues in the Riverdale section of the Bronx.

They were also accused of planning to shoot down military aircraft stationed at the Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, New York, using Stinger surface-to-air missiles.

The men never bought the missiles, but according to a statement released by the US attorneys office, were provided with one inert Stinger missile by the informant.

Lead prosecutor David Raskin, who had asked for life sentences for the three men, acknowledged that Cromitie had never used the term "Stinger missile."

But, he said, "the fact that it is all fake really does not matter.

"The fact is, it was a sting operation, but they still had a choice to pull out", said Raskin. "Those bombs were fake, but would they have been real, they would have killed lots of people," he said.

Last October, a jury found Onta Williams guilty on seven counts and Cromitie and David Williams guilty on eight counts.

The most serious -- conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, attempting to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles and attempting to kill officers and employees of the United States -- all had a minimum sentence of 25 years and a maximum of life.

"I have no discretion to sentence the defendants to less than statutory mandatory minimum," said McMahon. "So 25 years is the floor, life is the ceiling.

"That sentence will be 25 years," she added. "This case is sui generis. The government behavior here is questionable. It seems to me it has to change."

Cromitie defense attorney Susanne Brody argued that it took a long time for the FBI informant to convince Cromitie to go ahead with the operation.

Cromitie only agreed after he lost his job at a Wal-Mart and fell deeper and deeper into debt. The informant, said Brody, promised him money, cars and vacations.

He also had trouble finding accomplices, who were described by Brody and the judge as "low level drug dealers."

The three men, said Brody, "don't even know one another."

"The government evidently manufactured the crime," said Brody. "The government selected the charges. They provided everything. If this is not enough to dismiss the case, what would be?" asked Brody.

Cromitie, talking softly, told the court that he had "never been a terrorist, and I will never be a terrorist.

"I have put myself in a stupid mess. This is crazy," added Cromitie, who was allowed to wear civilian clothes for his sentencing.

"I am very sorry for letting myself get caught up in a sting operation like this, made up by the government," he said.

"I am a US citizen. I have never been outside the US," Cromitie said.

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3 Indonesian militants get prison for terror plot (AP)

JAKARTA, Indonesia – Three Indonesians radicalized by the teachings of a firebrand Muslim cleric were sentenced Tuesday to six years in prison for involvement in a terror plot.

A Jakarta court found Muhammad Iqbal, Helmi Wardani and Kurnia Widodo guilty of violating anti-terrorism laws by making bombs and exploding them in trial runs for a terrorist attack. It said they gleaned their bomb-making knowledge from the Internet.

Presiding Judge Mustofa said the men were influenced by the preaching of Aman Abdurrahman, a radical cleric who was sentenced to nine years in prison in December for involvement in a militant training camp in westernmost Aceh province.

Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, has battled militants with links to al-Qaida since 2002, when extremists bombed a nightclub district on Bali island, killing 202 people, most of them foreigners. A security crackdown since then has seen hundreds of militants killed or captured and convicted.

Mustofa said the three men, all in their thirties, were highly educated with no history of militancy until becoming radicalized through their participation in Islamic study at a mosque in West Java that was a base for Abdurrahman.

He said they planned to target police and local officials whom they considered their main enemy because of the government's support for the U.S.-led fight against terrorism.

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CIA role suspected in 2003 Iraq prison homicide (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A secret US federal grand jury is looking into the role of CIA agents in several alleged "war on terror" abuse cases, including the November 2003 homicide of a prisoner at Iraq's notorious Abu Ghraib prison, Time magazine reported Monday.

The dead man, Manadel al-Jamadi, became known as "the Iceman" when his CIA handlers placed his body in ice to slow decomposition in a failed attempt to hide the death.

Prosecutor John Durham has started calling witnesses, including US military personnel who served at Abu Ghraib, before the grand jury investigating the case, the magazine reported.

Durham spokesman Tom Carson had little to say. "This is an ongoing investigation," Carson told AFP.

US Attorney General Eric Holder appointed Durham in August 2009 to look into several cases of alleged harsh abuse by CIA agents on terror suspects that had been ignored for years.

Durham's grand jury mandate could involve charging CIA officers as well as contract employees in other cases, Time said.

"The grand jury is conducting an investigation of possible violations of federal criminal laws involving War Crimes (18 USC/2441), Torture (18 USC 243OA) and related federal offenses," the subpoena reads, according to Time.

Al-Jamadi's death at the US-run Abu Ghraib prison was officially classified as a homicide, but the only person ever charged in the case was found to be innocent.

Agents from the Central Intelligence Agency's Inspector General's office sent the case to the Justice Department for possible prosecution, but there has been no movement on the case, Time said.

The magazine first reported on the case in 2005, and ran pictures that included smiling US military personnel posing over the victim's body.

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Congress opens hearings on violent Islam in prison (AP)

WASHINGTON – Islamic radicalization in prisons continues to be a concern among law enforcement officials across the U.S., and countering it should not be a partisan issue, the top Republican on the House Homeland Security said Wednesday.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., led the second in what he's promised to be a series of hearings on violent Islamic radicalization in the U.S. The first hearing, held in March, broadly looked at Islamic radicalization around the country and what the Muslim community is doing to combat it. That hearing drew days of protests and criticism from Democrats who said that King and the Republicans were unfairly singling out Islam.

"I would urge my Democratic colleagues to rise above partisan talking points," King said during his opening remarks.

But the top Democrat on the committee, Bennie Thompson, of Mississippi, said there are few instances of Islamic radicalization in prisons, the subject of Wednesday's hearing. Thompson said the vetting process of incoming mail and prison chaplains ensures that Islam — the fastest growing religion among prisoners in the U.S. — does not inspire violence.

The majority of the recent terror plots against the U.S. have involved people espousing a radical and violent view of Islam, making it difficult to ignore the role religion plays in this particular threat. But critics say focusing too closely on Islam and the religious motives of those who have attempted terror attacks threatens to alienate an entire community.

To King, the purpose of these hearings is clear: "It's to show and remind people that the threat is here." Law enforcement officials from New York and California who have handled cases of prison radicalization are slated to testify Wednesday.

King said he can't blame people in the Muslim community for a person adopting a violent interpretation of their religion. But, he said, he can place blame if someone in the community knows of such a radical — for example, a prison chaplain who preaches a violent brand of Islam to impressionable inmates — and fails to point that person out to law enforcement or community leaders.

The White House, which pushed a message of religious tolerance ahead of King's initial hearing on Islamic radicalization, had no comment this time around.

There isn't an overwhelming number of cases in which terror suspects converted to Islam while in prison and plotted attacks against the U.S.

In his prepared opening remarks for the hearing, obtained by The Associated Press, King cites five examples since 2002 as well as a 2010 report by staff members on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, which indicated that dozens of ex-convicts who were radicalized in U.S. prisons have traveled to Yemen, possibly for terror training.

For years, law enforcement officials have said the prison atmosphere is ripe for recruitment for any extremist cause, from violent Islamist extremism to skinhead, white supremacist and Latino gangs.

Terror recruitment in prisons has been a concern of law enforcement and academics long before 2007 — so much so that the FBI and the Bureau of Prisons created a program in 2003 to improve intelligence collection, detection, deterrence and disruption of terrorist groups and other radicalization in prison.

One of the most cited examples of Islamic prison radicalization in the past decade is the plot in 2004 and 2005 to target military facilities, synagogues and other Los Angeles-area sites. The government said the ringleader, Kevin James, was a California State Prison inmate who converted to Islam while he was incarcerated for robbery. Three of James' followers were arrested before they could carry out the attack.

A more recent case is that of a 2009 plot in New York to bomb synagogues and shoot down military airplanes. Two of the four suspects in the plot converted to Islam while in prison.

Adopting the Islamic faith while in prison is not a new phenomenon. Islam took hold in U.S. prisons in the 1940s, when members of the Nation of Islam were held for refusing to fight in World War II. Malcolm X was one of their most famous prison recruits.

Many chaplains and corrections officials credit the faith, when taught properly, with being a stabilizing force that can help inmates turn their lives around.

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