A judge on Tuesday freed Brooklyn anarchist Gerald Koch, who had refused to testify as a witness in the 2008 Times Square bombing, after eight months behind bars. “The court finds it more likely that Koch will only derive increasing grim self-satisfaction from his position,” Federal Judge John Keenan wrote in his opinion. He said Koch appeared to view his role as a martyr as “more valuable than his health and freedom in the short run,” and he was letting him out, because “there is no realistic possibility that he will choose to testify before the grand jury.”
Koch is not a suspect in the bombing of a military recruitment office, but he went to jail back in May 2013, after refusing to answer questions from prosecutors who think he might have heard something about it in a bar in 2008 or 2009. On his website, jerryresists.com, Koch wrote in a statement that “the FBI does not actually believe that I possess any information about the 2008 bombing, but rather that they are engaged in a ‘fishing expedition’ to gain information concerning my personal beliefs and political associations.” Koch is a student at the New School, where he has one semester to go before graduation.
