They have been described as the most ruthless terrorists on US soil since Sept. 11, 2001, but of the four men arrested in New York, one says he was on drugs and another that he is illiterate.
First indications were of a well-prepared group of homegrown Islamists bent on bombing Jewish synagogues and firing a highly sophisticated anti-aircraft rocket at a US military plane.
But in court appearances on Thursday the four men came across more as the gang that couldn’t shoot straight — and certainly not adroit enough to realize an FBI informant had been leading them by the nose.
Of the four, only one reached the last year of high school, while several are believed to have been in prison previously.
School dropout James Cromitie, aged 55, told the judge he smoked marijuana on Wednesday, the day police nabbed him and his friends as they were allegedly launching their operation.
Co-defendant Laguerre Payen, 27, cut an even sorrier sight.
The diminutive Haitian immigrant appeared to have trouble understanding the proceedings and told the judge in a barely audible voice that he was on anti-depressant medication.
Payen said he had dropped out of school one year before graduation.
Asked if he could read, he answered: “No.” Could he write? “No.”
His lawyer, Marilyn Reader, told the court that Payen “is intellectually challenged” and suffers “from a form of schizophrenia.”
Meanwhile, the suspect that prosecutors describe as the hardest nut in the gang, 28-year-old David Williams, came into court with his jeans falling around his buttocks.
The case has electrified Americans because it involves three US citizens and an immigrant allegedly trying to copy the kind of attacks against Jews and military targets carried out by established Islamist groups.
New York police chief Raymond Kelly said the four, who face life in prison if convicted, “wanted to commit jihad,” or Muslim holy war.
However, no evidence has emerged of links between the four and foreign groups.
Their background appears to have been not in Pakistani training camps, but the US criminal scene — “prison contacts for the most part,” as Kelly said.
Prosecutors describe the group as “extremely violent men” who “pose an extreme risk of danger to the country.”
The case is based largely on the alleged gang’s association with an FBI informant, who has not been identified, other than that he or she pleaded guilty in 2002 to a fraud scheme.
The criminal complaint states that the secret witness was central to nearly every development in the allegations against the four men.
The witness discussed the plot with them, helped them procure what they thought were explosives and a Stinger missile — in fact duds supplied by the FBI — and even joined reconnaissance at the intended targets.
As a result, prosecutors say they have a mountain of audio and video recordings clearly showing the alleged gang preparing their conspiracy and talking about their hatred for Jews and the US war in Afghanistan.
Responding to Payen’s apparent inability to follow court proceedings, prosecutor Eric Snyder said pointedly that he had “six to 10 hours of crystal clear video where he is alert” and discussing the alleged plot.
To what extent the alleged gang was culpable — or gullible — is likely to feature heavily in the upcoming trial.
But for New Yorkers, relieved at the peaceful end to the affair, the suspects’ apparent lack of skill is welcome.
“If there can be any good news from this terror scare, it’s that this group was relatively unsophisticated, infiltrated early and not connected to another terrorist group,” New York Senator Charles Schumer said.
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