4 charged, 3 arrested in JFK Airport terror plot

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.\nThree 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 tracked for more than a year and was foiled in the planning stages.\n“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.”\nIn 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.\nOne of the suspects, Russell Defreitas, a U.S. citizen native to Guyana and retired 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.”\n“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.\nAuthorities 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.”\nHe was arraigned Saturday afternoon in federal court, but did not enter a plea. He was to be held pending a bail hearing scheduled for Wednesday, prosecutors said. A phone number for his lawyer could not be located.\nTwo other men, Abdul Kadir of Guyanaajl and Kareem Ibrahim of Trinidad, were in custody in Trinidad. A fourth man, Abdel Nur of Guyana, was still being sought in Trinidad.\nAuthorities said the men had tried to reach out to a Trinidadian radical Muslim group, Jamaat al Muslimeen, which launched an unsuccessful rebellion in 1990 that left 24 dead.\nThe pipeline, owned by Buckeye Pipeline Co., takes fuel from a facility in Linden, N.J., to the airport. Other lines service LaGuardia Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport.\nKadir, 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.\nKadir left his position in Parliament last year. Muslims make up about 9 percentof the former Dutch and British colony’s 770,000 population, mostly from the Sunni sect.\nIsha Kadir, the Guyanese suspect’s wife, said her husband flew from Guyana to Trinidad on Thursday. She said he was arrested Friday as he was boarding a flight from Trinidad to Venezuela, where he planned to pick up a travel visa to attend an Islamic religious conference in Iran.\n“We have no interest in blowing up anything in the U.S.,” she said Saturday from the couple’s home in Guyana. “We have relatives in the U.S.”