Trinidadian Imam Gets Life Sentence for JFK Airport Bomb Plot

Brenda Walker

01/14/2012

On Friday, Kareem Ibrahim (pictured), a Shiite imam from Trinidad, got a lifetime room in the Big House for his part in a terror scheme. He was convicted in Brooklyn last May.

The plan was to blow up fuel lines and tanks at Kennedy Airport in order to create a murderous firestorm that would “rival the horrors of 9/11.” The conspiracy was cooked up by a Guyanese immigrant, Russell M. Defreitas, who worked as a cargo handler at the airport and was given a life sentence earlier along with another Muslim.

Elite media don’t appear very interested in this story. When I looked a little while ago, The New York Times carried only a blog item even though the plot was local. Terror trials involving Muslims are strangely overlooked by the liberal press despite their going on all the time — something I’ve learned from having “Muslim terror trial” as a heading on my Google News page. For example, three North Carolina Muslims were sentenced on Friday to terms from 15 to 45 years for terror plots.

The dinosaur media is simply too politically correct to run stories suggesting that Muslim immigration threatens Americans and should be ended.

Trinidadian Gets Life Sentence in J.F.K. Bomb Plot, New York Times Cityroom Blog, January 13, 2012

A Trinidadian man who was convicted of plotting to blow up fuel tanks at Kennedy International Airport was sentenced Friday to life in prison.

“No one can doubt the seriousness of this crime,” said Judge Dora L. Irizarry of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, who compared the bomb plot to the Sept. 11 attacks as she handed down the maximum sentence to the man, Kareem Ibrahim, 66.

Mr. Ibrahim was one of four men accused in 2007 in what federal authorities said was a plot to cause a chain reaction along a pipeline that would damage vast areas of New York City.

Prosecutors presented evidence at trial that Mr. Ibrahim, an imam and a leader of the Shiite Muslim community in Trinidad, had provided operational support to the group plotting the attack. Mr. Ibrahim was extradited from Trinidad and Tobago for the trial.

Crucial evidence came from a convicted drug dealer and paid informer who contributed financial and logistical support to the plotters and secretly recorded their conversations.

Two of the conspirators, Russell M. Defreitas, a Guyanese immigrant and former cargo handler at the airport who prosecutors said conceived the plan, and Abdul Kadir, a former member of the Guyanese Parliament, were convicted in 2010 and were sentenced to life in prison. Another man, Abdel Nur, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Mr. Ibrahim waived his right to make a statement during the sentencing hearing on Friday. When the sentence was announced, he remained calm as one of his relatives in the courtroom told him to stay strong.

Mr. Ibrahim’s lawyers said they planned to file an appeal on his behalf.

“Kareem Ibrahim abandoned the true tenets of his religion and plotted to commit a terrorist attack that he hoped would rival 9/11,” Loretta E. Lynch, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement. “But law enforcement detected and thwarted the plot, saving lives.”

Funny how US attorney Lynch thought she was qualified to lecture the imam about the true nature of Islam, i.e., that it’s the religion of peace. She must not have read the Koran which is full of admonitions to kill the infidels.

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