More than two years after he was sentenced to life in prison for plotting to blow up fuel tanks at the John F Kennedy Airport, former PNC parliamentarian Abdul Kadir maintains his innocence stating that evidence which would have cleared him was not allowed.
“I now languish in prison, away from my family and all, stripped of my human dignity and rights, while still trying to understand everything,” Kadir said in a recent letter to this newspaper published on January 23.
Kadir and US-based Guyanese Russel Defreitas were sentenced to life in prison by Judge Dora Irizarry in December 2010, while another man, Kareem Ibrahim, a Trinidadian, was given the same sentence after he was also found guilty some time later.
Two other men, Abdel Nur–another Guyanese–and Donald Nero, have pleaded guilty to participating in the plot and were sentenced to 15 years in prison.
In his letter, Kadir said he was born Aubrey Michael Seaforth but he embraced Islam in 1974, changed his name and got married. He is now a father of nine and a few adopted children and a grandfather of 26.
He said he had never visited the US but transited in Miami in 1996 on his way to the Bahamas.
According to him it was in February 2007 that he met two Muslim brothers from the US, separately, in the streets of Georgetown and one of them turned out to be a confidential informant (CI) who was twice convicted and had a suspended life sentence from which he was trying to obtain relief by having other persons convicted.
The other was his co-defendant, who, he said, told him that he had known his name from a mutual friend in the USA (and that they attended the same mosque) and who had asked him to visit him whenever he came to Guyana.
“When I met them, I never knew that they had known each other,” Kadir stated.
In the same month, he received a call from his co-defendant who indicated that he was in the area and wanted to visit and when he did he was in the company of the CI and the visit lasted for a few minutes.
They visited him two days later and according to Kadir they had a business discussion during which he told them of his plans to build a mosque in his area and his co-defendant talked about their intended trade with items which were available specifically in the area he [Kadir] was living.
“The CI then introduced a video to me and asked me if I was interested in being a part of their plan to blow up fuel tanks at the JFK Airport. I told them that I had absolutely no interest in their plan. My position was corroborated by the CI in a recorded telephone call to my co-defendant the next day on February 20. This evidence was not admitted into trial,” Kadir said.
He said subsequent conversations between himself and the CI while he was in the US and in Guyana (recorded and unrecorded) indicated him stating to the two that it was “unislamic to do what they had in mind and that I was opposed to the idea and that I did not support it.”
He said other recorded conversations with him and the two and others confirm that he was never a part of their plan and their alleged plot.
“These were also not admitted as evidence into trial,” he maintained.
In May of 2007, he said, the two offered him a free ticket to travel with them but he declined the offer on the day before they left for Trinidad. He said while they were in Trinidad they called him and offered to contribute the ticket money to his mosque building and he accepted the offer but never received the money.
“In June 2007, I was in transit in Trinidad on my way to Venezuela to attend a religious conference in Iran when I was arrested. There, in Trinidad, I was jailed for 13 months then extradited to the USA where I was put on trial for conspiracy, found guilty, and sentenced to ‘life imprisonment’,” the former Guyanese parliamentarian said.
According to the evidence presented in court the plot was hatched by Russell Defreitas in 2006, and was designed to blow up fuel lines and tanks and, ultimately, “the whole of Kennedy,” Defreitas said in a taped conversation. The airport, the largest in the New York area, is located in the borough of Queens.
The plotters conducted airport surveillance, including videotaping its buildings, and sought expert advice, financing and explosives, said prosecutors in the office of US Attorney Loretta Lynch. They circulated the plan to an international network of Muslim extremists, according to the government.
Kadir has since appealed his sentence and late last year he had applied to the court for hard copy of his trial transcript to “perfect” his appeal, even though his court appointed counsel had already provided him with a CD containing his trial transcript.
However, in October last year Judge Irizarry denied his request to have the court direct his trial counsel or for the court to provide him hard copy of the trial transcript. She said that the court lacks jurisdiction to rule on any of his requests as his conviction is on appeal to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
