Four held over US missile plot
Updated on 21 May 2009
Four men have been arrested over a terrorist plot to blow up a Jewish temple and fire missiles at US military planes.
The FBI said the arrests came after a year-long undercover operation which saw an informant supply the men with dummy weapons and explosives.
The four have been charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction within the US and conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles.
Investigators said they had planned to detonate a car bomb outside a temple in the Bronx and to shoot military planes at the New York Air National Guard base at Stewart Airport in Newburgh with Stinger surface-to-air guided missiles.
Acting US Attorney Lev Dassin said: "The defendants planned to destroy a synagogue and a Jewish community centre with C-4 plastic explosives."
He said that in their efforts to acquire weapons, the defendants dealt with an informant acting under law enforcement supervision.
The FBI and other agencies monitored the men and provided an inactive missile and inert C-4 to the informant for the defendants.
In June 2008, the informant met one of the men, James Cromitie, in Newburgh and Cromitie complained that his parents had lived in Afghanistan and he was upset about the war there and that many Muslim people were being killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan by US military forces, officials said.
They claimed Cromitie also expressed an interest in doing "something to America".
In October 2008, the informant began meeting with the defendants at a Newburgh house equipped with concealed video and audio equipment.
The were filmed and recorded selecting the synagogue and the community centre they intended to hit.
They men were also monitored carrying out surveillance of military planes at the Air National Guard Base.
The defendants, all arrested in New York City, are due in court in White Plains, New York.
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