Infrastructure protectionFormer Guyana politician sentenced in JFK terror plot
Abdul Kadir, a former member of Guyana’s parliament, was sentenced to life in prison for participating in a plot to blow up the jet fuel supply tank system at JFK airport; the two other plotters are also of Guyanese origin: one, a former baggage handler at JFK, will be sentenced in late January; the other, Adnam Shukrijumah, has now been promoted to chief of al Qaeda’s global operations
Abdul Kadir, a former member of Guyana’s parliament who was convicted earlier this year of plotting to blow up the jet fuel supply tank system at JFK airport, has been sentenced to life in prison. The tanks he was plotting to blow up are connected through a series of pipes that run under the city to supply fuel for planes. Coconspirator Russell Defreitas, a U.S. citizen who is also a native of Guyana and former baggage handler at JFK, is scheduled to be sentenced 21 January.
Kadir and Defreitas were arrested in 2007 on charges of conspiracy to “cause greater destruction than in the Sept. 11 attacks”after an informant was able to infiltrate the plot and record the men discussing their plan. These recordings show the two men plotting to blow up fuel tanks at the airport and ranting that the plot would “dwarf 9/11.” The tapes also contain recordings of the two discussing contacting Adnam Shukrijumah, a top al Qaeda leader and explosives expert believed to be hiding the Caribbean at the time. Kadir maintains his innocence telling the Judge in Brooklyn “At no time did I have any intention or believe in bringing any harm to the people of this country by the terrorist acts I happened to be identified with.”
Kadir’s involvement in the attempted plot underscores the rise of militant Islamist terrorist cells outside of the Middle East. Terrorism is nothing new to South America and the Caribbean, where groups such as the FARC, Shining Path, and various drug cartels have long been engaging in attacks against civilians, but the influence of militant Islam is a more recent phenomenon.
Abdul Kadir was born Michael Seaforth and was a chemical engineer by profession. In 1974 Kadir converted to Islam, changing his name in the process, and in 1996 became mayor of Guyana’s second-largest city. Kadir served as mayor for two years and was elected to Guyana’s parliament in 2001, serving until 2006 as a member of the main opposition party, the People’s National Congress Reform. One year after he left parliament he was arrested on terrorism charges en route to Venezuela to obtain a visa to travel to Iran.
The JFK plot is not the first Islamist plot to be hatched in the Southern Caribbean. In 1990 the government of Trinidad and Tobago faced a coup d’état from a militant black Islamist group, Jamaat al-Muslimeen. That group was able to seize the parliament of Trinidad and Tobago,taking the prime minister and most of the cabinet hostage. The coup failed.
Adnan Shukrijumah, the explosives expert from whom the would-be JFK bombers sought expert advice, has in the meantime been promoted to chief of al Qaeda’s global operations. Shukrijumah is a Saudi national whose father was born in Guyana, thus giving Shukrijumah Guyanese citizenship. This position was famously held by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Shukrijumah lived in the United States for fifteen years as a green card holder.
Shukrijumah has also been indicted as a co-conspirator in the plot to attack New York’s subway system in 2009 after the three men accused of the attempted bombing identified him as their al Qaeda superior. Other evidence and travel records show that Shukrijumah had journeyed to Panama to research and surveil the Panama Canal for an attack involving the sinking of a freighter there.
These terrorism-related instances notwithstanding, the radical Islamic movement in the southern Caribbean is quite small, even though these countries have large Muslim populations.
