PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad - A judge has ordered three men extradited to the United States to face charges in an alleged plot to attack Kennedy Airport as it emerged yesterday that U.S. authorities will allege the plotters planned to seek help from Iran.
The prosecution's case includes taped conversations between the alleged conspirators showing they planned to seek Iranian help in a strike intended to dwarf the Sept. 11 attacks. "We can try to send someone to Iran to get the movement, the revolutionary movement, and they can discuss that plan there," Trinidadian suspect Kareem Ibrahim, an Islamic cleric, said in a transcript that appeared in a 28-page document signed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Marshall C. Miller and delivered to lawyers here.
Russell Defreitas, a U.S. citizen and Brooklyn resident who worked as a cargo handler at the airport until 1995, told Ibrahim that when contact was made with the Iranians, they should be told to attack on a winter night, because "these are the times they don't respond to nothing. Traffic slow down. Security slow down. Everything slows down," the document said.
In another conversation, Ibrahim said he had recruited an associate - "individual F" - who would "travel to Iran and present the plot to militants there." U.S. authorities intervened, apparently before the overture to Iran could be made.
One of the three men facing extradition is Abdul Kadir, arrested in June as he boarded a flight from Trinidad to Venezuela with plans to travel to Iran. His wife said he intended to attend an Islamic religious conference in Iran. Kadir, a cleric, studied Islam in Iran in the 1990s.
Richard Clarke-Wills, a lawyer for Abdel Nur, the third defendant, said he would appeal the ruling to the country's high court, and a decision should take at least six weeks. He insisted the men were ensnared by a secret U.S. government informant.
Defreitas, in custody in New York, has not yet entered a plea.
