* Defendants predisposed to commit attack, prosecutors say
* Defense says they were victims of entrapment
By Basil Katz
NEW YORK, Oct 4 (Reuters) - Four men accused of placing explosives outside New York synagogues last year were "ready and able" to commit crimes, prosecutors said on Monday, while the defense argued that they were victims of entrapment.
The four, arrested in an FBI sting operation in March 2009, were being tried in Manhattan federal court and face the possibility of life in prison if convicted.
They were arrested as they planted what they thought were explosives in two cars parked outside synagogues in New York City's Bronx borough, the prosecutors said.
Showing pieces of deactivated C-4 plastic explosives to the jury, prosecutor David Raskin said one of the men, James Cromitie, "wanted to be a soldier in America but against America.
"Now was his opportunity to bring jihad to America," Raskin said in his closing argument.
Defense attorney Vincent Briccetti said Cromitie was "impoverished, unsophisticated and unworldly," and was not predisposed to commit the attack."
Cromitie, along with co-defendants David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen, were not guilty because they were entrapped in a plan devised by the FBI and orchestrated by a paid confidential informant, Briccetti said.
The trial, which opened in August, has focused largely on testimony by FBI informer Shahed Hussain, 53, a Pakistani motel owner who has participated in other FBI investigations.
Hussain told the court that in this case he posed as a militant sent by a Pakistani group to find recruits for an operation in the United States.
The defense has portrayed Hussain as a liar with a murky past who induced the men into placing the bombs. "He lies compulsively, even pathologically," Briccetti said.
Prosecutors contended that Hussain merely facilitated a crime the men were predisposed to commit. "What happened in May started with Cromitie," said Raskin.
Hussain was approached by Cromitie in June 2008, according to prosecutors. With FBI equipment, Hussain recorded more than 100 hours of video and some 4,000 telephone calls.
In addition to planting the explosives, the four intended to shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, New York with Stinger surface-to-air missiles, prosecutors said.
They face eight charges, including conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles. (Reporting by Basil Katz; Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Chris Wilson)
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