NEW YORK, May 21 (RIA Novosti) - The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested four men accused of planning to blow up a synagogue in New York, along with other terrorist attacks.
A local official told a RIA Novosti correspondent that the arrests on Wednesday evening occurred minutes before the attackers had planned to set off a car bomb outside the Riverdale Temple synagogue in southern New York City.
Jeffrey Dinowitz, who represents Riverdale in the state assembly, said the FBI had been closely watching the group for about a year. The suspects drove the explosive-laden car from Newburgh to Riverdale. However, undercover FBI agents were able to infiltrate the group, and replaced the explosives with non-explosive materials.
The men were also planning to blow up a nearby Jewish Center, and to shoot down military aircraft at Stewart Airport, Newburgh using surface-to-air missiles.
Dinowitz said the blasts at the Jewish Center and the synagogue would have gone off simultaneously.
The U.S. Prosecutor General's Office has named the four suspects as James Cromitie, Onta Williams, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen. All of the suspects are from Newburgh except Payen, who is believed to be from Haiti.
Lev L. Dassin, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement posted on the New York FBI website that the detained suspects planned the attacks in revenge for U.S. military activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"In June 2008, an informant working with the FBI met Cromitie in Newburgh, New York. Cromitie explained to the informant that his parents had lived in Afghanistan and that he was upset about the war there and that many Muslim people were being killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the United States Military forces," the official said.
Cromitie also told the informant that if he "were to die a martyr, he would go to paradise" and expressed an interest in joining Jaish-e-Mohammed, a designated foreign terrorist organization based in Pakistan, to "do jihad."
