Hunt for Fourth Man in Ny Airport Terror Plot

Authorities in the US were yesterday hunting for a fourth man in the plot to explode jet fuel supply tanks under New York's John F Kennedy international airport, raising fears of a new front for al-Qaida and its affiliates in the Caribbean.

Three of the plotters, including a former cargo handler and a former MP from Guyana, were being held in Trinidad and Brooklyn, following what US authorities called an extensive surveillance operation that had lasted nearly 18 months.

The fourth man, named as Abdel Nur, was believed to be in Trinidad, the FBI said yesterday. Two of the three other men charged were being held in Trinidad. All four were Muslim, said officials.

The arrests at the weekend arose only weeks after the authorities disrupted a cell planning an attack on soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey, focusing the attention of the FBI on home-grown terrorists.

The FBI had been tracking the JFK airport plotters since January 2006, officials said. All four men appeared to have acted on their own initiative in the plot, which they dubbed Chicken Farm. They had been inspired by the "extremist vision of Islam propagated by al-Qaida".

John Miller, the FBI's assistant director of public affairs, told ABC television yesterday: "When you are looking at inspired-through-the internet, home-grown extremists, they can pop up anywhere. You have to focus in a 360-degree radius every moment of every day." Such difficulties were underlined by comments from New York's police commissioner, Ray Kelly, who described one of the plotters, Russell DeFreitas, 63, a US citizen of Guyanese origin, as a "self-radicalized New Yorker". Mr DeFreitas appeared before a magistrate in Brooklyn on Saturday.

In the latest home-grown plot, officials say JFK airport, which handles 1,000 flights a day, was never in imminent danger because the plot was in a preliminary state. The men had no detailed plans, no finances and no explosives.

However, Mr DeFreitas and his accomplices are accused of trying to inflict maximum psychological damage on the US, according to court evidence.

Mr DeFreitas worked as a cargo handler at the airport in the early 1990s. The FBI said he was taped saying: "To hit John F Kennedy [airport], wow ... if you hit that, this whole country will be in mourning. It's like you can kill the man twice." He is alleged to have boasted that the plot would be more devastating than the 2001 World Trade Center attacks. "Even the twin towers can't touch it," he allegedly said.

The plotters also allegedly had plans to blow up a 40-mile fuel supply pipeline that runs from a facility in New Jersey through Staten Island and the borough of Queens through to the airport.

Abdul Kadir, 55, a former member of parliament in Guyana, was arrested in Trinidad on Friday. He had been on a flight to Venezuela, which was ordered to return to Trinidad. US authorities are seeking his extradition along with that of Kareem Ibrahim, 56, also arrested in Trinidad.

The three men in custody are accused of extensive surveillance of the airport, using satellite images, photos and videos. They are alleged to have visited Guyana and Trinidad to forge links with Jamaat al-Muslimeen, an extremist Islamist group.