-defence argues ‘empty talks’
Former PNCR parliamentarian Abdul Kadir and ex-airline employee Russell Defreitas yesterday went on trial before a New York judge for attempting to blow up fuel pipelines at the John F Kennedy Airport.
But while the prosecution argued that the two along with others took concrete steps to make the plan a reality, the defence described the so-called plot as “empty talks.”
The two are on trial before District Judge Dora Irizarry while one of their co-defendants, Abdel Nur, also a citizen of Guyana, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to one count of providing support to terrorists. Another accused, Kareem Ibrahim, a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago, has been granted a separate trial at a later date due to a medical condition.
“They took concrete steps to make this plan a reality,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Berit Winge Berger told the jury yesterday in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, according to a Bloomberg report.
“Fortunately, the attack never happened. You see, the FBI was onto these men,” the prosecutor said.
The four allegedly hatched the plan in 2006 but were arrested in 2007 and according to investigators the planned attacks were designed to destroy “the whole of Kennedy,” the largest airport in the New York City area.
The plot was foiled in the planning stages with the aid of an informant, Steven Francis, Berger told the jury yesterday.
According to the prosecutor the plotters conducted surveillance of the airport, including videotaping its buildings and sought expert advice, financing and explosives.
However, lawyer for Defreitas, Len Kamdang, according to Bloomberg, described the plot as “a case about empty talk, exaggeration and overzealous prosecution “They didn’t just watch Mr. Defreitas. They pushed him,” he said.
Defreitas had reportedly said he was the “brain” of the plot.
Defreitas allegedly was sent from Guyana to conduct video and photo surveillance. He allegedly identified the target sites and escape routes, in part using satellite photographs from the Internet.
But his lawyer said the government, through Francis, gave Defreitas money, trips to the Caribbean and a place to live. He said his client is not a terrorist.
“It was the government that took Russell Defreitas to JFK,” Kamdang said in the Bloomberg report. “Without the government, Russell Defreitas is nothing. Without the government, Russell Defreitas is all sizzle and no steak.”
Defreitas allegedly compared the plot to terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Center in September 2001 when two planes were crashed into the towers.
“Even the twin towers can’t touch it,” he said in taped conversations, according to the US Justice Department. “This can destroy the economy of America for some time.”
Meanwhile, according to the report, Toni Messina, a lawyer for Kadir, told the jurors that her client never initiated any contact with the other accused plotters and they always called him.
“He never had any interest in this plot,” she said.
Messina said the government hired Francis to increase pressure on Defreitas to continue planning the attack. She told the jury that Francis was an informant because he had been convicted of drug trafficking and after doing prison time was caught again in 2002 with five kilos of cocaine.
“This is the guy the government trusted to run down supposed terrorists,” she said. “You’ve got to look really carefully at him. Because he’s a smooth operator,” she was quoted in the Bloomberg report as saying.
But the prosecutor told jurors that Kadir was an engineer who advised on the technical aspects of the plot and came up with code words such as “chicken hatchery” for fear he and his cohorts might be caught.
“Kadir was right to be worried,” she said. “Law enforcement was listening.”
Defreitas and Kadir face life in prison if convicted.