Information from two computers seized from the home of Guyanese Abdul Kadir and other documentation are among the evidence the prosecution will present when the conspiracy to blow up the JFK International Airport case starts.
The prosecution has made a number of documents and taped conversations available to the defence lawyers so they can review them before the commencement of the trial.
Kadir, a former PNC parliamentarian; former JFK worker Russell Defreitas, a Guyanese-born US citizen; Kareem Ibrahim, an imam from Trinidad and Guyanese Abdel Nur have been charged with conspiring to blow up JFK airport, tanks storing aviation fuel and underground fuel pipelines in 2007.
According to letters of discovery made available to the lawyers of the defendants by the government, information from some 54 taped conversations between May 7 and June 1, 2007 involving the defendants, co-conspirators and others are going to be used in the trial. Copies of the tapes were handed over to the lawyers earlier this week.
Also handed over to the lawyers was a 2003 interview Defreitas had with a Guyanese reporter along with various arrest documents including pedigree information, photographs, fingerprints and arrest warrants for Kadir, Ibrahim and Nur.
“Additionally, we have received information from the government of Trinidad regarding statements made by defendants Abdul Kadir, Kareem Ibrahim and Abdel Nur in Trinidad…” US State Attorney Benton J. Campbell said in a letter to the defendants’ attorneys.
Compact discs (CDs) containing copies of the video recordings made by Russell Defreitas in January 2007 were handed over as well as a DVD with video surveillance of Defreitas taken on February 28, 2007. Copies of surveillance photographs taken of the defendants in Trinidad in December 2007 and of Defreitas taken in the US were also among the pile of evidence handed over.
In relation to Kadir, Campbell said that copies of search warrants for the former parliamentarian’s home in Linden, a search warrant for the two computers, a warrant for his arrest and inventories and photographs of items sized from his person during his arrest in Trinidad were provided to his lawyer.
Kadir’s lawyer, Kafahni Nkrumah, was told that electronic copy of the computer evidence will be made available to him shortly and he was invited to review the seized computers in person. All of the items seized from Kadir’s home and from his person were also made available for his lawyer to review.
Kadir and Ibrahim were arrested in Trinidad, while Defreitas was held in New York. Nur later handed himself over to law enforcement officers in Trinidad.
Kadir was arrested in July 2007. He had transited Trinidad and was already on his way to Venezuela when the plane was ordered to turn back and he was arrested. The charge was read to him in the Port of Spain Magistrate’s Court.
One of the man’s daughters had said her father had been on his way to Iran where he had been invited to attend an Islamic conference when he was arrested. She had said that Kadir had left Guyana on the morning of the very day he was arrested and he had been scheduled to travel to Venezuela to pick up his Iranian visa before proceeding to Iran.
The prosecution has since indicated that it plans to use evidence provided through taped conversations from way back in December 2006 in the case. Transcripts of some 43 conversations taped between December 2006 and June 2007 have been handed over to the four lawyers for the defence. The conversations were consensually taped.
The four are set to appear in court again for a status report on July 18 before Judge Dora L Irizarry.
