New York airport bomb plotter given life sentence

Jet fuel tanks are seen outside JFK International Airport in New York June 4, 2007.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Wednesday sentenced an Islamist militant to life in prison after a jury found him guilty of participating in a plot to bomb New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

After a four-week trial, a federal jury in August found Abdul Kadir, 58, of Guyana, guilty of conspiring to blow up buildings, fuel tanks and pipelines at the airport in the New York City borough of Queens.

He was convicted along with co-defendant Russel Defreitas, a U.S. citizen born in Guyana, who awaits sentencing.

Defreitas, who had worked at the airport, provided knowledge of its facilities and layout, U.S. prosecutors said, while Kadir, an engineer, helped with technical aspects such as how to blow up buried fuel pipelines.

At the sentencing hearing in Brooklyn federal court on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Dora Irizarry said "there can be no doubt whatsoever that the offenses for which Mr. Kadir was convicted are about as serious as they come, short of murder."

During the trial, jurors heard testimony and watched video clips of the airport filmed by Defreitas, and listened to audio recordings of the men made by a government informant.

The men sought to offer their plans to Jamaat Al Muslimeen, an Islamist extremist group in Trinidad and Tobago that was behind a 1990 coup attempt on the island, prosecutors said, and also tried to send Kadir to Iran to muster support.

Kadir, arrested on board a flight to Iran via Venezuela, said he was on his way to a religious pilgrimage and was not doing anything related to the plot.

Defence attorneys for the men portrayed them as all bluster and no substance but prosecutors said they did more than just talk and "took concrete steps to make this plan a reality."

Two other men were arrested in the plot. Kareem Ibrahim of Trinidad and Tobago was deemed too ill to be tried, but may face trial later. Guyanese Abdel Nur pleaded guilty in June to a separate charge of material support to terrorism and faces up to 15 years in prison. (Reporting by Basil Katz; editing by Todd Eastham)