Russell Defreitas and Abdul Kadir, two men charged with plotting to blow up targets at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport, were found guilty of conspiracy charges Aug. 3 by a federal jury in Brooklyn. Defreitas, 67, a naturalized US citizen and former cargo handler at the airport, was found guilty of all six charges against him. Kadir, 58, a citizen of Guyana who once served as a parliament member there, was found guilty on five of the six charges, acquitted of surveillance of a mass-transportation facility. The men could face life in prison, with sentencing scheduled for December. Prosecutors said the men sought aid from al-Qaeda [2] operative Adnan Shukrijumah, recently indicted in federal court in a supposed plot to launch suicide attacks on the New York City subway system [3]. (WSJ [4], Aug. 3)
As we noted [5] when the pair were arrested in 2007, the men were supposedly linked to an Islamist militant organization that was behind an attempted coup d'etat in Trinidad [6] in 1990. Curiously, the convictions came the same day Trinidad's government announced formation of a commission to investigate the coup attempt just after its twentieth anniversary. More than 24 were killed and millions lost to looting and arson after militants stormed a session of parliament on July 27, 1990 in a move to overthrow the government of then-Prime Minister Ray Robinson.
The new government of Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar announced the new investigation last month, calling it necessary to bring closure to one of the most traumatic events in the history of Trinidad & Tobago. Accused coup leader and former mounted police constable Yasin Abu Bakr expressed his willingness to cooperate with the probe and reveal details of political deals he and his Jamaat al-Muslimeen [7] organization made with several past administrations. (Caribbean Life News [8], Aug. 3)
See our last post on the fear in New York City [9].
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