NEW YORK, United States — Two men accused in a terrorist plot hoped to cause a spectacular explosion that would kill thousands at New York’s Kennedy International Airport and avenge US oppression of Muslims, a prosecutor said today at the men’s trial.
The defendants wanted to blow up jet fuel tanks at the sprawling airport, causing an explosion “so massive … that it could be seen from far, far away,” Assistant US Attorney Zainab Ahmad said in closing arguments in federal court in Brooklyn.
Their vision prompted them to code name the plot “The Shining Light,” the prosecutor said.
Defense attorney Mildred Whalen countered by accusing a government informant of manipulating a ragtag crew of delusional dupes who had “seen too many Bruce Willis movies.” She called her client Russell Defreitas a “weak-minded, foolish man with a big mouth.”
Defreitas, 66, a former JFK cargo handler, and Abdul Kadir, 58, once a member of Parliament in Guyana, were arrested in 2007 after the informant — a convicted drug dealer — infiltrated the plot and made a series of secret recordings.
Prosecutors say Defreitas did reconnaissance on the airport, sought the help of a militant Muslim group in Trinidad along with Kadir and dreamt of delivering a devastating economic blow to the United States.
Defreitas, a naturalized US citizen from Guyana, “is a classic homegrown extremist,” Ahmad said.
As part of the plot, Defreitas and the informant traveled to Guyana to try to meet with Kadir and show him homemade surveillance videotapes of the airport’s so-called fuel farms, the prosecutor said. The plotters also discussed reaching out to Adnam Shukrijumah, an al-Qaida operative and explosives expert who was believed to be hiding out in the Caribbean at the time, she added.
Shukrijumah, an FBI-most wanted terrorist, was indicted in federal court in Brooklyn this month on charges he was involved in a failed plot to attack the New York City subway system with suicide bombers.
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