Guyanese Donald Nero, who admitted to participating in the early stages of a plot to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport, yesterday received a four-year prison sentence, after providing what a judge described as “extraordinary” testimony during the trial of his former co-conspirators.
Nero, 51, pleaded guilty in 2008 to helping fellow Guyanese Russell Defreitas, Abdul Kadir, and Abdel Nur devise a plan to explode fuel tanks and a fuel pipeline under the airport in an attack whose dimensions “would have been greater” than the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Federal prosecutors had requested a more lenient sentence for Nero than the one prescribed under federal guidelines, given the key role his testimony played during the trials of Defreitas and Kadir, both of whom were convicted for taking part in the planned attack and sentenced to life in prison, a Reuters report said.
Defreitas, 67, a former cargo handler at JFK, and Abdul Kadir, 59, a former parliamentarian for the PNCR, were sentenced to life in prison in August of last year. Nur, 60, was sentenced to 15 years after he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.
The other co-accused in the plot, Trinidadian Kareem Ibrahim, an imam and Muslim community leader in Trinidad, was found guilty in May and faces up to life in prison if convicted.
According to the report, Nero got cold feet and dropped out of the plotting of the attack, nicknamed “The Shining” because of the giant, fiery explosion that the plotters expected to light up the sky around the airport, before it was put in motion.
Nero faced 30 years to life in prison under federal sentencing guidelines.
However, because he voluntarily came to the U.S. from Guyana in 2008 to help investigators build their case against Defreitas and other co-conspirators, providing extensive details on the failed plot in the face of death threats from Defreitas, Judge Dora Irizarry reduced the sentence to four years.
“What is also of striking importance here is that despite your initial agreement to participate in the plot, there was a point when you pulled out and said, ‘No, I don’t want to follow through on this,’” Irizarry said.
In handing down the reduced sentence, Irizarry noted the unusual show of support for Nero from federal law enforcement officers, who praised his cooperation in detailing the JFK threat, as well as other matters that were not publicly disclosed due to national security concerns, according to the court.
The report said during the hearing in Brooklyn federal court, Nero said he accepted responsibility for his actions and apologised to the people who may have been harmed during the planned attack. “I am actually, really, truly sorry for the part I played in the early stages of the plot against JFK,” he told the court.
Nero will receive credit for the time he has spent in federal custody since voluntarily leaving Guyana to come to the United States in September 2008, said his lawyer, Lee Ginsberg of Freeman Nooter & Ginsberg. With that credit he will spend an additional six months to a year in prison, according to Ginsberg. “I think the judge truly understood the depth of his remorse and the level of his assistance, which was really extraordinary,” Ginsberg said.
Irizarry noted during the hearing that Defreitas and other individuals had made threats against Nero and his family after Nero stepped forward to cooperate with federal authorities. Ginsberg did not comment on what steps would be taken to protect Nero and his family following the sentence.
