Informant takes stand in NY temple plot case

The government’s star witness against four men charged with trying to blow up New York synagogues and shoot down military planes told a jury Friday that one defendant told him that he hated Jews and Americans and that he wanted to be a martyr and “do something to America.”

Shahed Hussain said he was standing by his car outside a Newburgh, N.Y., mosque in June 2008 when he was approached by James Cromitie, the alleged ringleader of the plot that was doomed from the start because an important facilitator — Hussain — was working for the FBI all along.