Feds arrest 3 in alleged JFK airport terror plot
Ex-cargo worker and Guyana government official among suspects named
Alleged terror conspirator Russell Defreitas, second left, is shown in a courtroom sketch of his arraignment at the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, on Saturday. Defreitas and two other people were arrested and a fourth man is being sought for allegedly plotting to blow up a fuel line that runs to John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Christine Cornell / AP
JFK airport terror plot
June 2: The FBI says three suspects are in custody in relation to a “chilling terror plot” that once again had New York City in its crosshairs. The target was the jet fuel supply at JFK international airport. NBC’s Mike Taibbi, and WNBC’s Jonathan Dienst, who broke the story, report.
MSNBC News Services
Updated: 9:55 p.m. PT June 2, 2007
NEW YORK - Federal authorities announced Saturday they had broken up a suspected Muslim terrorist cell planning a “chilling” attack to destroy John F. Kennedy International Airport, kill thousands of people and trigger an economic catastrophe by blowing up a jet fuel artery that runs through populous residential neighborhoods.
Three men, one of them a former member of Guyana’s parliament, were arrested and one was being sought in Trinidad as part of a plot that authorities said they had been tracked for more than a year and was foiled in the planning stages.
“The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable,” U.S. Attorney Roslynn R. Mauskopf said at a news conference, calling it “one of the most chilling plots imaginable.”
In an indictment charging the four men, one of them is quoted as saying the foiled plot would “cause greater destruction than in the Sept. 11 attacks,” destroying the airport, killing several thousand people and destroying parts of New York’s borough of Queens, where the line runs underground.
Plan allegedly hatched years ago
One of the suspects, Russell Defreitas, a U.S. citizen native to Guyana and former JFK air cargo employee, said the airport named for the slain president was targeted because it is a symbol that would put “the whole country in mourning.”
“It’s like you can kill the man twice,” said Defreitas, 63, who first hatched his plan more than a decade ago when he worked as a cargo handler for a service company, according to the indictment.
Authorities said the men were motivated by hatred toward the U.S., Israel and the West. Defreitas was recorded saying he “wanted to do something to get those bastards” and he boasted that he had been taught to make bombs in Guyana.
Despite their efforts, the men never obtained any explosives, authorities said.
“Pulling off any bombing of this magnitude would not be easy in today’s environment,” former U.S. State Department counterterrorism expert Fred Burton said, but added it was difficult to determine without knowing all the facts of the case.
Federal officials told NBC News that Defreitas, the alleged mastermind of the plot, looked for others to work with him and that one of the first people he turned to, unbeknownst to him, was an FBI informant.
According to officials, the FBI tracked Defreitas when he went to Guyana to recruit help for his plot, meeting with radical Muslims there, including Abdul Kadir, a member of the Guyana parliament who is a former town mayor.
Investigators allege Defreitas was dispatched from Guyana to conduct video and photo surveillance of JFK four times in January. Investigators tell NBC News they tracked Defreitas as he identified targets and escape routes and assessed airport security.
Expert: Damage would have been isolated
Richard Kuprewicz, a pipeline expert and president of Accufacts Inc., an energy consulting firm that focuses on pipelines and tank farms, said the force of explosion would depend on the amount of fuel under pressure, but it would not travel up and down the line.
“That doesn’t mean wackos out there can’t do damage and cause a fire, but those explosions and fires are going to be fairly restricted,” he said.
Since Defreitas retired from his job at the airport, security has significantly tightened and his knowledge of the operation was severely outdated.
He was arraigned Saturday in federal court in Brooklyn, where he was held pending a bail hearing Wednesday. His court-appointed lawyer told the judge that officials were not revealing the full story, according to reports.
2 suspects facing extradition
Two other men, Kadir and Kareem Ibrahim of Trinidad, were in custody in Trinidad. A fourth man, Abdel Nur of Guyana, was still being sought in Trinidad.
Trevor Paul, the top police official in Trinidad and Tobago, a twin-island nation off Venezuela’s coast, said Kadir and Ibrahim would likely be extradited to the U.S. after court hearings in Trinidad.
Authorities said Kadir and Nur were longtime associates of a Trinidadian radical Muslim group, Jamaat al Muslimeen, which launched an unsuccessful rebellion in 1990 that left 24 dead.
Phone calls to Yasin Abu Bakr, the radical group’s leader, went unanswered Saturday.
Kadir, a former member of Parliament in Guyana, was arrested in Trinidad for attempting to secure money for “terrorist operations,” according to a Guyanese police commander who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Kadir left his position in Parliament last year. Muslims make up about 9 percent of the former Dutch and British colony’s 770,000 population, mostly from the Sunni sect.
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