AP News, June 8th, 2007
The alleged mastermind of a terror plot against John F. Kennedy International Airport briefly gained attention in his native Guyana four years ago when he said he unwittingly carried cocaine in his baggage on a trip to New York.
Russell Defreitas was on Guyanese television in May 2003 when he demonstrated outside an airline he blamed for allowing six packets of cocaine to be placed in his luggage. He discovered the drugs after passing through customs, turned it over to U.S. authorities, and was not arrested because they believed it had been planted, he said.
At the time, Defreitas said the experience left him mentally anguished and fearful of retribution from the traffickers who tried to use his baggage to smuggle the drugs. He sued the airline, demanding compensation.
"I was disarranged mentally," Defreitas, 63, said then. "I went into hiding for a year and developed mental problems."
The four-year-old interview has been rebroadcast repeatedly this week in Guyana as people in the South American country puzzle over how their native son could have organized a plot with three other men to blow up JFK's fuel lines.
Defreitas, who emigrated from Guyana about 30 years ago, worked as a cargo handler at JFK until he was laid off several years ago.
He was arrested June 1 in New York; his three alleged conspirators, including a former opposition member of Guyana's parliament, are being held in Trinidad and Tobago.
Their arrests have baffled friends and family, who say several of the men have mental problems and other issues that make them incapable of pulling off such a conspiracy.
One of the suspects, Abdel Nur, also from Guyana, has been unable to keep a regular job or partner since divorcing his wife a few years ago, said his nephew, Andrew Lewis.
"He just tried to make a meal everyday. He is going to enjoy himself in a U.S. jail better than living on the streets in Guyana," Lewis told The Associated Press. "He is pretty unstable and would not harm anyone like that. He used to preach to me that Islam is about peace ... He is no terrorist."
A third suspect, Kareem Ibrahim, a Trinidadian imam, hasn't flown on a plane since 1979 because he suffers "extreme claustrophobia," his daughter, Huda Ibrahim, told reporters in Trinidad.
The fourth, Abdul Kadir, is a university-educated civil engineer, former opposition legislator and ex-mayor of a small city in Guyana. His family also denied he had any involvement.
An official with North American Airlines, a small U.S. carrier that flies out of Guyana, recalled the cocaine incident.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for lack of authorization to discuss Defreitas, said someone had used his luggage and that of another passenger to traffic cocaine. The official said Defreitas did report it to customs after arriving in New York and neither he nor the other passenger were charged.
Airline spokesman Steve Forsyth said Defreitas filed a lawsuit against the carrier in 2003 alleging that cocaine had been put in his luggage. He said the case was pending in a Guyanese court and had no more details.
U.S. Customs spokeswoman Lynn Hollinger said there have been cases of South American traffickers smuggling drugs using luggage of unsuspecting passengers.
