A 58-year-old former member of Guyana’s parliament was sentenced to life in prison on Dec. 15 for planning a terrorist attack against JFK Airport that never came to fruition.
Abdul Kadir, a naturalized United States citizen with ties to international terrorist leaders and the Iranian government, thumbed his nose at the sentencing at Brooklyn federal court and continued to proclaim he was not involved in a plot to detonate gas tanks and fuel pipelines that run under the airport, as well as a wide swath of Brooklyn.
“On the day of judgment, which we all have to face, I will never have to account for the crimes that I’m convicted of,” Kadir told Judge Dora Irizarry, according to court records. “God will judge me as a victim … I am innocent.”
“Forgive me if I don’t buy into your statement,” Judge Irizarry retorted before passing her sentence.
Kadir and three others were arrested in 2007 before they could make good on their plans to blow up the Buckeye pipeline, which runs from Linden New Jersey to fuel tanks buried underneath JFK.
Federal prosecutors said Kadir came up with the idea as he worked at the airport as a cargo handler.
Between 2006 and 2007 he made trips to both Guyana and Trinidad, where he recruited co-conspirators Russell Defreitas, Abdel Nur and Kareem Ibrahim.
Kadir and Defreitas were convicted of conspiracy to attack a public transportation system in July, 2010 following a nine-week trial. Nur pled guilty to supporting the plot and is expected to be sentenced up to 15 years in prison. The case against Ibrahim is expected to go to trial next year.
At trial, federal prosecutors said Kadir reached out to his sources in the international terrorist community as he advanced his plan — seeking advice on what type of explosives to use. He also set up a bank account to finance the plot.
If Kadir went ahead with his plans, he would have killed scores of people as well as caused extensive damage to JFK and New York’s economy, prosecutors alleged.
Kadir’s attorney said the 58-year-old “played a small role” in the plan, which they said would have been impossible to pull off. Still, his arrest forced federal officials to take a renewed look at the pipeline’s vulnerabilities.
In Brooklyn, the Buckeye pipeline can be accessed at a number of points inside a fence-in strip of land behind the Bay Ridge Towers near 65th Street and Third Avenue, yet pipeline officials said the plan “would not have worked the way the terrorists wanted it to.”
“Our pipelines are very well protected and are constantly monitored on a 24/7 basis, every day of the year,” pipeline spokesman Kevin Doherty told members of Community Board 10 shortly after Kadir’s arrest.
Sentencing in child’s death
A 27-year-old Crown Heights man is facing 25 years in prison for his role in a four-year-old boy’s death.
Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes said Steven Dadaille pled guilty to manslaughter in the first degree and admitted to beating and whipping little Jayden Lenescar to death.
Dadaille was sentenced on Dec. 15 during a brief appearance before Judge Patricia DiMango.
Lenescar died on Oct. 23, 2009 after being rushed to the hospital, where doctors determined that the 4-year-old had died from blunt trauma. Massive contusions were found all over his body, officials said.
Investigators immediately focused their attention on Dadaille and his girlfriend Myrna Chenphang — Lenescar’s mother. Both were arrested a few weeks later.
As he pled guilty, Dadaille admitted that he and Chenphang beat the four-year-old arms, legs and torso with his fists and whipped him with a belt for two days — all because they caught the toddler touching his own genitals.
Dadaille claimed he and Chenphang battered the child when he wouldn’t tell them who had taught him to touch himself.
Prosecutors said Chenphang pled guilty to manslaughter on Nov. 12 and is expected to be sentenced to 20 years in prison on Jan. 19.
