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Three busted in JFK Airport terror plot

Saturday, June 02, 2007

(New York - WABC, June 2, 2007) (WABC) -- Even though the plot appears to be in the early stages, officials are calling the details chilling. The plan was to blow up jet fuel lines that run to the airport.

Three suspects have been arrested including one right here in New York. Investigators are still looking for a fourth.

Eyewitness News reporter N.J. Burkett has details on the investigation.

Would-be terrorists who liked to think big. That is how federal prosecutors are portraying these four men tonight.

This alleged plot reads like a script from a Bruce Willis movie, but the investigators insist that the threat was real. Federal agents say the plan was nothing less than to blow up JFK airport, everything from the jets to the terminals, to the employees and the passengers.

"The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable," U.S. Attorney Roslynn R. Mauskopf said at a news conference, calling it "one of the most chilling plots imaginable." Authorities arrested a former JFK employee named Russell Defreitas, a U.S. citizen native to Guyana. He is suspected of masterminding the alleged plot with three others.

"The enforcement action that we are announcing today was taken to prevent the terrorist plot from turning into terrorist act," said Assistant FBI Director Mark Mershon.

But the scenario seemed just as implausible as it was chilling. Prosecutors say the men intended to attack the pipeline that carried jet fuel from Linden, New Jersey to the airport in Queens, what was to be a series of coordinated explosions intended to destroy the airport in a massive chain reaction.

Although authorities say the plot never got off the drawing board, they insist that the men were determined to carry it out using photos and satellite imagery, commonly found on the internet, of JFK airport.

"They consistently worked to refine their plot. They took extensive measures to seek expert advice, finances and explosives," said Mershon. "The bottom line is we believe this threat has been fully contained."

An agent says their most serious concern is the men appeared to be seeking help from a terrorist group in Trinidad. Three men, one of them a former member of Guyana's parliament, were arrested and one was being sought in Trinidad as part of a plot that authorities said they had been tracked for more than a year and was foiled in the planning stages.

A fourth man, Abdel Nur of Guyana, was still being sought in Trinidad.

One of the three suspects arrested made his first appearance Saturday in federal court. With that part of the story, Eyewitness News reporter Stacey Sager has more from the Brownsville section of Brooklyn where the suspect lived.

Brooklyn does appear to be his last known address but we also know that Russell Defreitas traveled to Trinidad as part of the alleged plot. In court Saturday, prosecutors call him the self proclaimed brainchild of all this. His defense attorney is barely speaking at all.

"No comments at this point," said Defreitas' attorney.

The defense attorney appointed to his case either wouldn't or couldn't shed to much light on 63-year-old Russell Defreitas who used the alias Mohammed appearing court Saturday wearing long robe.

His long white beard is familiar to some in the Brooklyn neighborhood that is known as his last address. Some residents were too nervous about the story to appear on camera but telling Eyewitness News this.

"He is kind of old. He has a long beard with gowns. You never see him in normal clothes," one of neighbors said. "I'm positive it was him."

Here is what we know about the Defreitas. He was U.S. citizen, the only one in the group of the alleged terrorists, but he was born this Guyana.

He was a retired employee at Kennedy airport who said in recorded conversations that he had unrestricted access to cargo areas at JFK. That he knew where the pipeline was located, and he conducted surveillance at the airport four times.

The police commissioner Ray Kelly was calling Defreitas, "a self-radicalized New Yorker."

"He worked and lived in Brooklyn and Queens plotting to betray his adopted country with a catastrophic attack," said Commissioner Kelly.

The only up side, authorities say, Defreitas has never managed to become more than a wannabe.

Speaking about his airport job, he said, "I would sit and see a plane taxiing up the runway. And I would say, If I could get a rocket, then I could do a hit.. But nobody ever approached me."

And about his alleged plan, he allegedly said, "to hit John F. Kennedy, wow. They love John F. Kennedy like he's the man. It's like you can kill the man twice."

"It's horrendous that someone like that lived right here in the same neighborhood," said the neighbor.

Now Russell Defreitas will be held in jail until his bail hearing on Wednesday.

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