Head of the Presidential Secretary and Cabinet Secretary Dr. Roger Luncheon said yesterday that no concerns have been raised with the Guyana Government about the setting up of terrorist cells in the country.
According to the Government Information Agency, the HPS was responding to a question raised during yesterday’s post-Cabinet media briefing and which referred to recent reports that an Argentine prosecutor had alleged that Iran has been setting up such cells in the Caribbean and Guyana.
Dr. Luncheon said that the allegations which surfaced from the disclosures made by the Prosecutor from Argentina “were the first that were being brought to our attention indirectly.”
He further stated that neither the Argentine Government nor international bodies have submitted to the Government of Guyana, “in any official way that they have evidence or concerns about setting up of terrorist cells by Iran in Guyana.”
Last week, Reuters reported Argentine State prosecutor Alberto Nisman as referring to the case of former PNCR MP Abdul Kadir who was jailed for life by a New York court in 2010 for his role in a plot to blow up the John F Kennedy Airport.
Nisman is investigating the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people. Argentine courts have long accused Iran of sponsoring the attack.
In a 500-page-long document, Nisman cited what he said was evidence of Iran’s “intelligence and terrorist network” in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname – among others.
Nisman said new evidence underscored the responsibility of Mohsen Rabbani, the former Iranian cultural attache in Argentina, as mastermind of the community centre bombing and “coordinator of the Iranian infiltration of South America, especially in Guyana.”
Nisman said U.S. court documents showed Islamist militant Kadir was Rabbani’s disciple. Kadir has maintained his innocence of the plot and has never addressed the details of his ties with Iran or what Tehran’s motives were for extending its largesse here.
Kadir “received instructions” from Rabbani “and carried out the Iranian infiltration in Guyana, whose structure was nearly identical … to that established by Rabbani in Argentina,” the prosecutor wrote.
Kadir, 58, served as a PNCR MP in the eighth Parliament of Guyana, from 2002 to 2006. He is also a former mayor of Linden. He was arrested in June 2007 on a plane in Trinidad on his way to Iran. He was charged along with four others. The bomb plot was hatched in January 2006 and reportedly involved blowing up jet fuel tanks leading to the airport.
Kadir had testified that he was not involved in the terrorism scheme but that he had feigned interest in the plan because he hoped its architects would help him raise money to build a mosque.
Once on the stand during the trial, the prosecution confronted him with evidence of his ties to Iran. The evidence included letters Kadir wrote to the Iranian ambassador to Venezuela and to the Iranian diplomat who has been accused of leading a major terrorist plot in South America, the New York Times reported.
While on the stand, Kadir denied an accusation by the US that he spent years secretly working as a spy for Iran and that he allegedly relayed information about Guyana’s economy, foreign policy and military to Iranian officials. However, according to a Bloomberg report, Kadir admitted under cross-examination that he drafted regular reports for the Iranian ambassador to Venezuela, including details like the “low morale” in the Guyanese army. The documents he allegedly drafted included a five-year development plan to promote Islam in Guyana, which included references to infiltrating the military, police and other government agencies.
