US to use taped conversations from  back in 2006 as evidence

US authorities plan to use evidence provided through taped conversations from  way back in December 2006 against the four men, including three Guyanese, who are charged with conspiring to blow up the John F Kennedy International airport as well as tanks storing aviation fuel and underground fuel pipelines.

According to court documents seen by this newspaper US State prosecutor, Benton Campbell, handed over transcripts of some 43 conversations taped between December 2006 and June 2007 to the four lawyers for the defence.

Those facing charges in the US are former Guyanese parliamentarian, Abdul Kadir, former JFK worker Russell Defreitas, a Guyanese-born US citizen; Kareem Ibrahim, an imam from Trinidad; and Guyanese Abdel Nur.

Kadir and Ibrahim were arrested in Trinidad, while Defreitas was held in New York. Nur later handed himself over to law enforcement officers in Trinidad.

Kadir was arrested in July 2007 after he had transited in Trinidad and was already on his way to Venezuela when the plane was ordered to turn back and he was arrested and the charges read to him in the Port of Spain Magistrate’s Court.

One of the man’s daughters had said her father had been on his way to Iran where he had been invited to attend an Islamic conference when he was arrested. She had said that Kadir had left Guyana on the morning of the very day he was arrested and  he had been scheduled to travel to Venezuela to pick up his Iranian visa before proceeding to Iran.

In his letter to the attorneys, Campbell stated that the conversations were consensually taped which means that the US authorities’ informant, the man who stands behind the charges against the men, gave authorities permission to tape the conversations. The man had reportedly made more than one trip to both Guyana and Trinidad and while Kadir’s family admitted he met with the man they said he was tricked and that no plot was discussed.

The four are set to face trial in March of next year before Judge Dora Irizarry.