Judge’s radical view of ‘Molotov’ lawyers

A judge on Tuesday compared the two lawyers accused of tossing a Molotov cocktail into an empty NYPD car to Weather Underground radicals who accidentally blew up a Greenwich Village townhouse in 1970.

Federal Appeals Court Judge Gerard Lynch made the comparison as attorneys for accused bomb-throwers Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman argued to a three-judge panel from the Second Circuit Court for their clients to be released on bail.

Lynch said there is precedent for widespread protests in the US over racial inequality — but only a few people in the past have used homemade explosives to get their message across.

“A very tiny minority . . . people who like these defendants had high levels of education, had every reason to think twice, who wound up blowing up a townhouse in Greenwich Village,” Lynch said.

“When people respond at this level, it is indeed aberrant,” he added.

Rahman’s attorney, Paul Shechtman, argued the comparison was unfair in part because the Weather Underground members who blew up the townhouse were part of a criminal organization.

Mattis and Rahman got caught up in the heat of the moment at a protest and targeted an empty cop car, Shechtman argued.

Rahman allegedly tossed the device into the car while she and Mattis were driving around Brooklyn on May 29 during a confrontation between police and demonstrators near the 88th Precinct station house in Fort Greene.