Informant in JFK Case Helped Out Before
4 charged in plot to blow up NYC airport
Associated Press
Published: June 20, 2007
NEW YORK (AP) -- A convicted drug trafficker who infiltrated a group of men accused of devising a plot to bomb Kennedy Airport had previously offered help to investigators in exchange for a lighter punishment, according to documents posted Thursday on a Web site.
Authorities had already said in court papers that the informant was assisting them in the hopes of earning a reduced sentence for a 2003 conviction for trafficking. The Smoking Gun obtained the informant's court papers in the drug case and posted the documents, revealing previously unknown details of his criminal past.
Authorities confirmed his identity and the veracity of the papers posted on the site, but they asked that his name not be made public out of concern for the safety of the informant and his family.
A court document posted on the site detailed the informant's most recent arrest, among other criminal exploits: A narcotics detective had caught the man with five kilograms of cocaine in November 2002, and investigators found another 44 kilograms of cocaine in a closet of a Bronx apartment connected to the man. The cocaine was said to be worth about $2 million.
He and his narcotics associates were also accused of conspiring to commit murder in hopes of enhancing their drug operation, the papers said.
The Kennedy Airport case was not the first time that the informant has helped investigators in exchange for a lighter punishment, according to the papers. After a 1996 conviction for racketeering and drug trafficking, the man provided "substantial assistance" to the government, court papers said, earning him a seven-year sentence when guidelines called for at least 27 years.
While it was not clear how much the informant's sentence would be reduced, his effectiveness as a mole was apparent.
The informant this month helped federal investigators bust four men who are accused of participating in a Muslim terror cell that planned to blow up a jet-fuel artery that runs through neighborhoods in the New York borough of Queens and feeds the airport.
Federal authorities said the informant was so convincing that the suspects gave him unfettered access to their operation, allowing him to gather evidence against the group. Three of the men - Kareem Ibrahim, Abdul Kadir and Abdel Nur - are now being held in Trinidad. A fourth, Russell Defreitas, who once worked as a cargo handler at Kennedy, is being held in the U.S.
The informant made several overseas trips to discuss the plot, even visiting a radical Muslim group's compound in Trinidad. The suspects were even convinced he was guided by a higher purpose, with the ringleader saying the informant "had been sent by Allah to be the one" to pull off the bombing, according to a federal complaint.
Huda Ibrahim, a daughter of the one Trinidadian suspect, denied that her father or Kadir had any role in the suspected airport plot. She said recently that they were set up by a U.S. government informant posing as an Islamic missionary.
"The source visited our brothers with the specific intent to entrap them in activities they know nothing about, never agreed to, and did not participate in," she said.
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Associated Press writer Tom Hays contributed to this report.
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