Suspects in alleged JFK plot to be extradited

A judge Monday ordered three men extradited to the United States in connection with an alleged plot to attack New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Taped conversations between the suspects show that they planned to seek Iran’s help in the strike, according to a 28-page confidential document signed by Assistant U.S. Atty. Marshall C. Miller and delivered to lawyers here.

“We can try to send someone to Iran to get the movement, the revolutionary movement, and they can discuss that plan there,” Trinidadian suspect Kareem Ibrahim, a Muslim cleric, was quoted as saying in the report.

In another conversation, Ibrahim said he had recruited one of his associates, described only as “individual F,” who would “travel to Iran and present the plot to militants there.”

U.S. authorities apparently stepped in before the overture to Iran could be made. Officials at the Iranian Interests Section in Washington did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment.

One of the three who faces extradition is Abdul Kadir, who was arrested in June as he was boarding a flight from Trinidad to Venezuela with plans to travel to Iran. His wife said he intended to attend a religious conference.

Kadir was an opposition legislator in Parliament in Guyana, a South American country along the Caribbean coast, until last year.

Richard Clarke-Wills, a lawyer for Abdel Nur -- the third defendant in the extradition -- said he would appeal to Trinidad and Tobago’s high court. Clarke-Wills said a confidential U.S. government informant entrapped the men into plotting an attack.

Nur and Ibrahim scoffed at the accusations before the hearing. Kadir said nothing.

Their lawyers argued that the men could not be extradited for conspiracy under Trinidadian law. Chief Magistrate Sherman McNicolls rejected the claim without comment.

The three were arrested in Trinidad in June, when U.S. authorities announced they were part of a cell led by Russell Defreitas, a U.S. citizen from Guyana who worked as a cargo handler at the airport until 1995 and is now in custody in New York.