Claims and doubts on JFK 'plot'

[Karl]

Claims and doubts on JFK 'plot'
Analysis
Rickey Singh
Sunday, June 10, 2007


TOMORROW, three nationals of the Caribbean Community will appear in a Trinidad and Tobago magistrate's court in the sensational case - unprecedented in this region - linking them with an alleged "terrorist plot" to blow up fuel tanks and pipelines at JFK International Airport in New York.

Rickey Singh

Amid a backdrop of ringing official claims of "evidence" of the criminal intent that contrast with scepticisms by others about the accuseds' capacity to execute such a plot, two Guyanese and a Trinidad and Tobago national will be facing charges of "conspiracy to commit a terrorist act under the laws of the United States".

Trinidadian Kareem Ibrahim and the two Guyanese - Abdul Kadir and Abdul Nur - have been charged along with another Guyanese, now a naturalised American, Russell deFreitas, already in FBI custody in New York. According to documents circulated by US authorities, the men were under surveillance for some 15 months.

Nur was on the run for three days before surrendering to the police last Tuesday. Wearing a broad, if forced smile, he was to openly declare before the media and curious onlookers that "this (the plot) is a big set-up".

Much of the troubling stirrings relating to the claimed foiled plot are based largely on allegations of a convicted drug dealer working as an agent with the FBI.

Also, yet to be substantiated is the alleged link between the quartet of accused Caricom nationals and the high-profile controversial Sunni-oriented Jamaat-al-Miuslimeen organisation of Trinidad and Tobago, headed by Imam Yassin Abu Bakr.

Notoriety of the organisation is rooted in its aborted July 1990 coup against the Government of then Prime Minister ANR Robinson and involving some 144 Muslimeen activists under Bakr's command. The high court was to surprisingly later endorse the validity of a Presidential 'pardon' to the insurgents and set them free.

Since then, "disciples" of the Jamaat have been variously accused of alleged involvement in serious crimes, including murder and attempted murder; gun-running and minor bombing incidents.

Guyanese Abdul Kadir (left foreground), looks to reporters gathered outside the Magistrate's Court, while leaving his extradition hearing in downtown Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, Monday, June 4, 2007.
Imam Abu Bakr himself is due to reappear in a High Court this week on charges of sedition and promoting terrorism by inciting violence, in a sermon at his mosque in November 2005, against wealthy Muslims who fail to increase their contributions to his organisation.

In contrast to claims against them in US Justice Department documents, the quartet of alleged terrorists, none of whom is known to have had any involvement in Islamic radicalism in the Caribbean, or association with al Qaeda-linked groups, are yet to plead to or deny the charges against them.Their family members have been defending their innocence.

Kadir's wife, Isha, and Ibrahim's daughter, Huda, have told the media that while the four men had met at various times in Guyana and Trinidad, there were no connections with "any plot" about JFK or anywhere else in the USA.

Maps of pipelines taken by Guyana police from the home of Kadir had to do with contract jobs in the bauxite town of Linden where he lives with his devoutly Muslim family, according to his wife.

An eningeer by profession and, until last August, a parliamentarian of the main Opposition People's National Congress Reform, Kadir was said to have been on his way to Venezuela to uplift a visa to travel to Iran for an Islamic conference when he was held at Piarco International Airport by Trinidad and Tobago police.

Along with Ibrahim and Nur, he was charged with conspiring to commit the terrorist act at JFK airport.

Last Tuesday, in response to an angry verbal blast from Abu Bakr's organisation that he was a key actor in a "conspiracy" between the US and Trinidad and Tobago governments against the Muslimeen, Attorney-General John Jeremie told the Trinidad Express: "There are extensive recordings of video and audio evidence" that had led him to the conclusion of a link between the Muslimeen and the four accused plotters. Consequently, his Government was actively co-operating with US law enforcement agencies.

At the same time, across in Guyana, and following a media briefing by acting Police Commissioner Henry Greene, on the reported association involving the three Guyanese accused and Abu Bakr, President Bharrat Jagdeo told an official event that the terrorist suspects would have been "absolutely crazy" to be involved in a plot that "has soiled Guyana's image".

Inside the USA itself, doubts have been publicly expressed to the media by independent sources - separate from Justice Department officials or what's contained in circulated documents - about the "unimaginable consequences" had the foiled terrorist plot been executed.

. For example, John Goglia, a former member of the US National Transportation Safety Board, is reported as contending that had the 'plot' been carried out, it would "likely have sparked a fire but little else, and certainly not the mass carnage authorities have described... You could definitely reach the (fuel) tank, start the fire, but to get the kind of explosion they have talked about is virtually impossible..."

. Another report by the French news agency, AFP, quoted Jake Magish, an engineer with 'Supersafe Tank Systems', as casting doubt on the credibility of the plot.

"The fantasy that I have heard," he said, "about people saying they (suspected terrorists) will blow the tank and destroy the airport, is nonsense. This is hysteria. From an engineering point of view, if someone is successful in blowing a hole into a tank, they will just have a fire from that tank. There is no way for the fire to go from tank to tank... It just won't happen..."

. Further, Neal Sonnett, a former US federal prosecutor, has told the New York Times there was also "a danger in overstating how serious or sophisticated a plot really was..."

It is, therefore, felt that as investigations continue into the alleged "plot" foiled in its "planning stages", there should be no rush to judgement in this bizarre issue that has captured national, regional and international attention this past week.

While governments in Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana worry about likely negative consequences of the Caribbean being linked with claimed "terrorist cells", their nationals, particularly those with Muslim names, are expressing fears of more harassment, and worse, they could now face being processed on arrival at US airports.

In the face of such apprehensions, US envoys based in various regional capitals have been offering assurances that the freedom to travel to America by citizens from this region would not be affected by the development of the uncovered "terrorist plot".

US ambassadors in Georgetown, Port-of-Spain and Barbados have been separately stating what is already widely known beyond Caricom, that this region is not viewed in Washington as a base for terrorism by the George W Bush administration, or Congress, though there is growing recognition for strengthened co-operation in the interest of mutual security.

Most certainly this issue of security co-operation between the US and Caricom and, more precisely, in battling terrorism, would now be well placed on the agenda for the Washington Summit of President Bush and our Community heads of government later this month (June 19-21).

In this context, it would be difficult for a very pertinent issue to be avoided at the coming Washington Conference on the Caribbean: the sensitive matter of US authorities' continuing failure to co-operate with Caricom's repeated request for the Cuban émigré and former CIA-operative, Luis Posada Carilles, to be brought to justice for his documented role in the 1976 bombing tragedy of a Cubana passenger plane off Barbados.

All 75 people aboard that aircraft perished - 59 Cubans, 11 Guyanese and five North Koreans. For now, however, the focus will be on tomorrow's court appearances in Trinidad of Ibrahim, Kadir and Nur and, separately, that of deFreitas in a New York court. Will the accused trio in Trinidad be extradited as requested by the USA?

[Karl]

Calypso conspirators
Diane Abbott
Sunday, June 10, 2007


British and American media have worked themselves into a frenzy of excitement about a possible Caribbean al-Qaeda terrorist cell in the United States. It is alleged that there was a plot to blow up New York's John F Kennedy Airport.

Diane Abbott
US attorney Roslynn Mauskopf told a press conference that it was "one of the most chilling plots imaginable", and added, "Had the plot been carried out, it could have resulted in unfathomable damage, deaths and destruction".

New York's police commissioner Raymond Kelly suggested the Caribbean connection opened up a whole new potential threat to the United States. "This is an area in which we have growing concern, and that I think requires a lot more focus," he said. So what lay behind it all? Do Islamic terrorists really have cells in the West Indies? Are West Indians in America the enemy within?

It is worth noting that all of the supposed Islamic terrorists are actually black Muslim converts. The four accused are: Russell deFreitas who is of Afro-Guyanese origin but is a long-time New York resident; Abdul Kadir (born Michael Seaforth) another Afro-Guyanese; Kareem Ibrahim (known as Pops) an Afro-Trinidadian and Abdul Nur (born Compton Eversley) another Afro-Trinidadian.

deFreitas was arrested in New York and the others are being held in Trinidad. Of the four, Abdul Kadir is probably the most substantial figure and (at 55) the youngest. He is a trained civil engineer who spent his career in Guyana's bauxite industry. So he was probably the one with the most technical competence to carry out the plot they were accused of planning.

But he was also a serious political player in Guyana. A member of the main (Afro-Guyanese) dominated opposition party, he had been mayor of the well-known black town of Linden and a member of parliament. deFreitas, 63, has been described as "a small-time hustler who lived at society's margin"; 57 year-old Nur was deported from the United States in the late 1980s for drug offences and was described as someone who "worked odd jobs, smoked drugs at night and talked about Americans as oppressors"; while little is known about 61 year-old Ibrahim.

Islam in the West Indies is more significant than some might think. The countries with the most Muslims are Suriname, Trinidad, and Guyana. Trinidad apparently has the largest concentration of mosques in the western hemisphere - 85 in all. The first Muslims in the region were African slaves from West Africa. The majority now are from the Indian sub-continent. But in Trinidad, and Guyana in particular, some black people have embraced Islam.

A Guyanese politician, Hamilton Green, explained his conversion in these terms, "In the old colonial days, to gain access to public positions in the social service, and for social mobility, one had to be a Christian. In fact, many parents of today's Christian families converted as a prerequisite of acceptance. But I saw myself as an Afro-Guyanese. I recognised that my earliest ancestors who came to Guyana and the West Indies were not Christians. I took a personal objection that I was railroaded into a religion, the choice of which I had nothing to do with, and I chose the religion of my ancestors". He probably sums up the position of most black Muslim converts in the region. It is a political rather than a theological choice.

Much has been made about the alleged links between the New York plotters and a Muslim organisation in Trinidad, Jamaat-al-Muslimen. This notorious group is led by Yasin Abu Bakr (born Lennox Philips). In 1990, they staged an attempted coup in Trinidad. They stormed Parliament and the TV station and took the Cabinet hostage. Twenty-four people died. But the coup had more to do with Trinidad's history of racially inspired riots and revolutionary social protest movements than it had to do with Osama bin Laden.

Most recently, the Trinidad police say the group has had more to do with criminal rackets than political causes. And Abu Bakr emphatically denies any involvement in the plot.

The dramatic news reporting about the plot obscured the fact that it had not got much further than long (probably inebriated) conversations on the telephone.

The plotters had no money and no explosives. The original plan had been to crash an aeroplane into several other passenger jets on the ground at Kennedy in order to create a catastrophic explosion. But the conspirators did not have the requisite skills (none of them could fly) and could not recruit anyone else, so they decided to set off an explosion at the airport's fuel tanks in New Jersey.

Apparently they hoped the pipelines would blow up and kill thousands. But a spokesman for the company which operates the pipelines pointed out that pipeline safety mechanisms and the difficulty of igniting jet fuel mean they could not have been ignited by an explosion at the fuel tanks. And US officials have admitted that there is no reason to believe that the four accused had the technical know-how, or the simple competence to carry out the plot they were fantasising about.

But if George W Bush is to continue his war on terror and justify the slaughter in Afghanistan and Iraq, he needs to keep the American population terrified with blood-curdling tales of terrorist plots. It is convenient that news of this alleged plot surfaced at a time when the American public's support for the war in Iraq is at an all-time low. It has suited the American authorities to hype up this ageing and penniless group of Caribbean conspirators. But I suspect we will find that their terrifying plot only really existed in their imaginations.