-evidence of plot against US, UK missions here excluded
The jury in the trial over an alleged plot to blow up New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport watched video for the first time of a defendant and a government witness driving around the airport as part of planning for the attack, according to a Bloomberg report.
According to the report, Russell Defreitas, an ex-airline employee, and Steven Francis, a government informant who allegedly infiltrated the group, were seen on the video with Defreitas pointing out fuel tanks and the air-control tower.
“As long as one of them tanks get hit: all gone,” Defreitas told Francis on the video recorded on January 3, 2007 and played in the federal court in Brooklyn, New York, yesterday.
Defreitas along with former PNC parliamentarian Abdul Kadir are on trial for hatching the plot in January 2006.
They allegedly circulated their plan to an international network of Muslim extremists, prosecutors said in court papers.
Francis, a naturalized U.S. citizen from the Dominican Republic, became a confidential informant for the federal government after he was convicted of drug trafficking.
“You just can’t believe a place like Kennedy can be so lapsing,” Defreitas, a US citizen originally from Guyana, told Francis as they drove around the cargo and other areas where Defreitas used to work. “Yes! No soldier, nothing at all!”
Bloomberg reported that Defreitas told Francis on the tape that the attacks were designed to destroy “the whole of Kennedy.” The plot was foiled in the planning stages with the aid of Francis, Assistant U.S. Attorney Berit Berger told the jury in her June 30 opening statement.
Francis testified that Neville Rutherford, a businessman in Guyana and a co-conspirator not charged in the case, told him that Christmas Eve would be a good time to conduct the attack because there would be less security at the airport.
Meanwhile, the report said that Judge Dora Irizarry, who is presiding over the trial, ruled yesterday that the government cannot introduce evidence about a second plot to blow up the US Embassy and British High Commission in Guyana.
Rutherford had reportedly discussed that plan with Francis in Guyana in 2006, the government said.
Defreitas and Kadir weren’t aware of the plan. Prosecutors wanted to use the second conspiracy to counter the defense argument that without Francis the JFK plot wouldn’t have moved forward.
Lawyers for both men opposed allowing the evidence in, saying it would be prejudicial against their clients.
“It’s not part of the conspiracy that’s at issue here,” the judge told the lawyers outside the jury’s presence. “It’s a secondary plot.”
And Judge Irizarry allowed Francis to testify generally that he worked overseas for the US on other terrorism probes at the same time as the JFK case.
The plotters conducted surveillance of the airport, including videotaping its buildings, and sought expert advice, financing and explosives, the prosecutor said.
Defreitas, who by then no longer worked at the airport, allegedly was sent from Guyana to conduct video and photo surveillance. He allegedly identified the target sites and escape routes, in part, by using satellite photographs from the Internet.
Defreitas allegedly compared the plot to terrorist attacks on New York’s World Trade Center in September 2001 when two planes were crashed into the towers.
“Even the twin towers can’t touch it,” he said in taped conversations, according to the Justice Department. “This can destroy the economy of America for some time.”
In her opening statement, prosecutor Berger told jurors that Kadir was an engineer who advised on the technical aspects of the plot.
The plot was circulated to radical groups in South America and the Caribbean, including Jamaat al Muslimeen, which staged a coup attempt in Trinidad in 1990.
Abdel Nur, another Guyanese pleaded guilty June 29 to one count of providing support to terrorists for his role in the plot. Kareem Ibrahim, a citizen of Trinidad, was granted a separate trial at a later date due to a medical condition. The two face life in prison if convicted.
