Mastermind of JFK airport terror plot schemed to kill witnesses – court documents

The New York Post yesterday said that the Guyanese man convicted of masterminding a plot to blow up fuel pipelines at JFK Airport plotted from behind bars to kill key witnesses against him, according to newly unsealed court documents.

Russell Defreitas, 68, a retired airport baggage handler was last year sentenced to life in prison for the foiled bomb attack plot. The Post said he sought the aid of several fellow prisoners to eliminate witnesses before the start of his 2010 terrorism trial in Brooklyn federal court, officials said.

A court sketch of Russell deFreitas

The Post report said that Defreitas also wanted to kill one of his own attorneys, Mildred Whalen, whom he thought to be Jewish, officials said.

“Defreitas told [an informant] that he wants his Jewish attorney dead because she is the reason his first attorney was removed from his case,” prosecutors wrote.

Further, Defreitas hoped to target an unnamed federal prosecutor for assassination, officials said.

“Defreitas said that [co-defendant Abdel] Nur insisted that the prosecutor ‘had to go,’” an informant related, according to the government’s March 2010 letter.

The new revelations are contained in a letter unsealed this week by a Brooklyn federal judge, the Post report said. However, before Defreitas’ trial, prosecutors advised the judge that threats had been made to witnesses in the terror case, so security precautions were put in place, an anonymous jury was empanelled and no one was hurt.

One of the targets was Steve Francis, a government informant who secretly taped the JFK plotters, officials said, according to the post.

“Defreitas informed [a second jailhouse informant] that the only way to beat the case now was to have Francis killed,” prosecutors wrote.

Defreitas then told this informant that he would be paid by a friend to kill Francis, prosecutors said in the letter.

The feds say that Defreitas also considered another witness to be a threat after he heard that the man had been brought to New York from Guyana to testify against him. As a “reward for delivering these messages,” Defreitas promised one informant “promotion in the Muslim ranks,” prosecutors wrote. Defreitas was convicted of the infamous JFK terror attack scheme along with fellow plotters Nur, Abdul Kadir, an engineer and former member of Guyana’s parliament, and Kareem Ibrahim.A court sketch of Russell deFreitas