The four defendants were identified as Russell Defreitas, a U.S. citizen and native of Guyana who was arrested in Brooklyn. Authorities said Defreitas was the former airport employee.
They said two suspects were in custody in Trinidad and Tobago, and identified those two as Abdul Kadir, a citizen of Guyana and former member of its parliament, and Kareem Ibrahim, a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago.
The fourth was named as Abdel Nur, described as a citizen of Guyana. They provided no other immediate information on Nur’s whereabouts, but said Kadir and Nur were associates of Jamaat Al Muslimeen, which was behind a deadly coup attempt in Trinidad in 1990.
“Any time you hit Kennedy, it is the most hurtful thing to the United States. To hit John F. Kennedy, wow … they love John F. Kennedy like he’s the man … if you hit that, this whole country will be mourning. You can kill the man twice [bold mine-DL],” Defreitas said in another conversation, it said.
“Even the twin towers can’t touch it,” referring to the September 11 attacks in another comment that the law enforcement authorities said was recorded last month. “This can destroy the economy of America for some time.” ~Reuters
Ross notes that we have been fortunate recently in having very stupid enemies. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that this Defreitas was not what you might call a fully assimilated newcomer. If Defreitas was already a naturalised U.S. citizen, it is not hard to imagine that there are other Defreitases operating beneath the radar. It makes amnesty seem rather foolish, doesn’t it?
It is worth noting that the only planned attack (and it was only in the “planning stages” at that) against American targets originating from Latin America had its beginnings in Guyana and Trinidad. These are not the normal bogeymen of interventionist fearmongering (they are both next to Venezuela, but that is about as much connection as there is). This makes some sense, since 10% of Guyana’s population is Muslim and around 6% of Trinidad and Tobago’s population is Muslim. (Interestingly, Guyana is also 35% Hindu–it makes sense, given the past British connection, but I confess I had no idea this was the case.)
The much-feared “triangle” in southern South America is a border region where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet, and it is one part of the continent that interventionists have been screaming warnings about (when they haven’t been engaged in their favourite pastime of Venezuelophobia). These would all be countries with very, very few Muslims, and this “triangle” would seem to be an area that has so far, at least as far as the public knows, not generated any threats against the United States. Perhaps if more anti-jihadists were more focused on anti-American enemies, rather than worrying about Hizbullah fundraising, we might begin to develop some sort of coherent and intelligent policy to oppose them.
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June 2nd, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Grumpy Old Man
Guyana is in fact a case study for the immigration issue. Having freed the African slaves, and the slaves having had access to land for subsistence farming and had enough of stoop labor, the British found themselves without cheap labor. As in Fiji, they imported indentured labor from India.
Upon winning independence, Guyana was more or less evenly split between the African-Guyanese ex-slaves and the Indian-Guyanese ex-indentured laborers. Its first Prime Minister was a communist, Cheddi Jagan, whose wife Janet was an American Jewess from New York. Trinidad has a similar history, but the African-Trinidadians have a clear majority.
The Indians generally have higher IQs and come from a Great Tradition, which gave them a leg up. In Fiji, unlike Guyana and Trinidad, these ethnic battles are fought with bullets as much as ballots.
The U.S. has more experience at assimilating strangers than do these islands (for pedants, yes, I know, Guyana is only an honorary island), and for the moment there are more resources to go around. Even here, we already have major political turf battles in Los Angeles, and Mexican youth gangs are taking over turf at gunpoint. Only rather short-sighted capitalists who have adopted multi-culti rhetoric as a matter of convenience can be blind to the obvious risks. Of course, if you live in a gated community, send your kids to an exclusive private school, and prefer not to mow your own lawn, you can afford to turn your nose up at “nativism.”
There’s a considerable population of Arab immigrants in South America (including Argentina’s ex-president Menem and São Paulo’s sometime governor Maluf), although for historical reasons they are sometimes known as “turcos”. n Brazil, ownership in architecture and contracting tends to be Jewish and in the rag trade, Arab. Most turcos are Christians but there are some Muslims, some of whom no doubt are jihadis who can blend into the smuggling culture of the “triangle.”
I am all for commerce and minding our own business as the cornerstones of our policy in the Southern Cone. Less neglect of our own southern frontier would be a good idea; we can dream, can’t we?
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:03 pm
M.Z. Forrest
Thankfully this was all released on Saturday so that it can be on the front page of every Sunday newspaper and on the talk shows. Not to be cynical or anything.
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:55 pm
Grumpy Old Man
Politicians will, of course, make use of this stuff.
However, most of these plots seem stupid and inept when thwarted, but if one succeeds those who failed to take it seriously will be excoriated as inattentive and inept. Although political use is made of these things, they are all too real, and the would-be perpetrators are often autonomous and self-directed.
If there are twenty plots a year and one in a hundred succeed, we’ll have one successful one every five years. Basis statistics tells us that there are enough trials, even an improbable event becomes probable.