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NEW YORK - Four people, including a former member of Guyana's parliament, have been charged in connection with a plot to blow up New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, US officials said overnight.
Another one of the suspects was a former cargo handler at the airport. The four were charged with conspiring to attack the airport by planting explosives to blow up the airport's major jet fuel tanks and pipeline, the US Justice Department said and other law enforcement officials said in a statement.
The attacks would result in destruction of "the whole of Kennedy," one suspect said in a recorded conversation, according to the statement. He predicted very few survivors.
This was "one of the most chilling plots imaginable," Roslynn Mauskopf, US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, told a news conference. "The devastation that would be caused ... is just thinkable."
The 64km fuel pipeline to the airport extends from New Jersey and through the New York boroughs of Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens.
The plot was foiled well before it came to fruition and the FBI said there was no threat to the public from the plot.
Mark Mershon, assistant director of in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's New York field office, said there was no indication of any connection with al Qaeda.
"We believe this threat has been fully contained," he told the news conference.
The plot, which was investigated from January 2006 to the present, tapped into an international network of Muslim extremists from the United States, Guyana and Trinidad.
The four defendants were identified as Russell Defreitas, a US citizen and native of Guyana who was arrested in Brooklyn. Authorities said Defreitas was the former airport employee.
They said two suspects were in custody in Trinidad and Tobago, and identified those two as Abdul Kadir, a citizen of Guyana and former member of its parliament, and Kareem Ibrahim, a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago.
The fourth was named as Abdel Nur, described as a citizen of Guyana. Merchon said Nur was a fugitive who was believed to be in Trinidad. The authorities said Kadir and Nur were associates of Jamaat Al Muslimeen, which was behind a deadly coup attempt in Trinidad in 1990.
"Any time you hit Kennedy, it is the most hurtful thing to the United States. To hit John F. Kennedy, wow ... they love John F. Kennedy like he's the man ... if you hit that, this whole country will be mourning. You can kill the man twice," Defreitas said in another conversation, it said.
"Even the twin towers can't touch it," referring to the Sept. 11 attacks in another comment that the law enforcement authorities said was recorded last month. "This can destroy the economy of America for some time."
The law enforcement authorities said the investigation was helped by an informant, who recorded the conversations with the suspects.
- REUTERS
