NEW YORK As a cargo handler at John F. Kennedy International Airport, Russell Defreitas watched military parts be shipped to Israel and believed they would be used to kill Muslims.
He seethed with rage against the U.S. and Israel for more than a decade after retirement before finally deciding, authorities said, that he wanted to “get those bastards.” Drawing on his inside knowledge of the massive airport, Defreitas conspired with three men to blow up the airport’s underground jet fuel tanks and its pipeline in a spectacular attack designed to kill thousands in the populous neighborhood, authorities said.
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http://wcbstv.com/topstories/local_story_153200552.html
Alleged plot casts light on radical Islam in the Caribbean
June 2, 2007
MIAMI - The alleged terror plot against JFK airport in New York has cast a spotlight on radical Muslim elements in the Caribbean, including a group that launched the hemisphere's only Islamic revolt and a former Broward County, Fla., man wanted by the FBI. In 1990, Yasin Abu Bakr, a Muslim leader on the twin-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago, led a six-day coup attempt the government with his 113-member Jamaat al Muslimeen organization. The prime minister was shot and wounded and 24 others killed.
In an indictment unveiled in New York on Saturday, the U.S. government accused the four men of conspiring to plant explosives at the airport of trying to contact Abu Bakr personally to seek his support. Two of them failed, but one of them claimed to have talked to Abu Bakr, the indictment said. Three of the men are from Guyana and one is from Trinidad. Two of the men were arrested last week in Trinidad and police are searching for a third suspect there. The fourth man was arrested in Brooklyn Friday night.
John Jermie, Trinidad's attorney general, told The Miami Herald that his Caribbean nation is not a hot spot for terrorism activity, '' but it is the home of the Jamaat movement and that is a movement which has caused us in law enforcement considerable difficulty over the last 15 years in this country. But we have managed to keep them contained.''
Abu Bakr and his followers received amnesty after the coup attempt, but he was later accused of ordering the murders of two expelled members of his group. The first trial ended with a hung jury, and a judge later dismissed the charges after key witnesses recanted their testimony against him. He is now preparing to stand trial on terrorism charges based on televised statements he made during a sermon at his mosque in which he threatened war against those Muslims who refuse to commit part of their income as a tithe to his mosque. If convicted, he could face up to 25 years in jail.
Abu Bakr also was investigated in a string of bombings that injured 28 people between July and October 2005 in the capital city of Port-of-Spain, but he was never charged. Trinidad and Tobago's population is nearly 6 percent Muslim.
Jermie said while the investigation into the alleged JFK plot is still early, ''We do have some indication there is a connection,'' to Abu Bakr's group. ''We are still working on it and we are cooperating with the U.S. Department of Justice, we've done some good work.''
Muslims, mostly Sunnis, make up about 9 percent of Guyana's population of about 770,000. Though Guyana has not had the same level of l activity as Trinidad, the FBI has been looking for Adnan Gulshair Muhammad el Shukrijumah, a former Broward County resident and one of the few alleged al-Qaida members known to have been in Latin America - in his case, Trinidad, Guyana and Panama. The Saudi Arabia-born el Shukrijumah lived with his parents in Miramar, Fla., until four months before the Sept. 11 attacks. An FBI statement at the time said he was ''possibly involved with al-Qaida terrorist activities and, if true, poses a serious threat.''
Panamanian officials have confirmed he visited there for 10 days in 2001, using a legitimate Guyana passport. He was also reportedly spotted in Guyana in late 2003. Part of his family still lives there. A Honduran government assertion that he was spotted there in 2004 was discounted by U.S. intelligence.
Federal investigators told the Miami Herald in 2003 that el Shukrijumah's aliases came up during interviews with alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed after he was captured in Pakistan in 2003. They also were found in documents of the Oklahoma flight school where Zacarias Moussaoui, convicted of conspiracy in the attacks. There have been media reports that Mohammed visited Latin America in the 1990s. Agents had no proof el Shukrijumah received flight training in Oklahoma, according to Herald reports. Thirteen of the Sept. 11 hijackers lived and trained in South Florida.
His father, Shaykh Gulshari Muhammad el Shukrijumah, was the spiritual leader of a neighborhood mosque in Miramar. He died at home in 2004. El Shukrijumah's father studied Islam in Saudi Arabia, and the family moved to Guyana when the father was sent there as a missionary. The son spent much of his youth in Guyana and the family moved to the United States in 1995, when the son was 19. He graduated from Broward Community College with a computer engineering degree in 2001.
FBI statements in 2003 said he carried a passport from Guyana but could also have passports from Saudi Arabia, Canada or Trinidad. Media reports in 2003 said the FBI was investigating the son for possible links to Imran Mandhai, a Pakistan-born college classmate and Hollywood resident sentenced in 2002 to 12 years in federal prison for a bomb plot. Mandhai's co-defendant, Trinidad-born Shueyb Mossa Jokhan, was sentenced to five years for his part in the conspiracy to bomb electrical stations, a National Guard Armory and Jewish businesses.
http://www.newspress.com/Top/Article/article.jsp?Section=NATIONAL&ID=565027485206839300
I was wondering today what Abu Bakr was doing.
THANKS for the articles/updates Oorang.