The trial of two terror suspects, arrested for allegedly trying to blow up New York’s John F. Kennedy airport and kill thousands in 2007, is nearing its end with the prosecution and defence making their closing arguments.
Russell Defreitas 66, a former JFK cargo handler, and Abdul Kadir, 58, a former Member of Parliament in Guyana, were busted after an informant infiltrated the plot and recorded their plans.
A jury will soon be given the case, and the suspects face up to life in prison, if convicted.
Prosecutors made their closing arguments yesterday, and said the accused wanted to cause a major explosion, and kill thousands of people.
Prosecutors say Defreitas was the mastermind behind the plan to blow up aviation fuel tanks connected to the Queens airport. The men were arrested before they could move beyond the planning stage of the alleged plot.
Prosecutors said that Defretias did reconnaissance on the airport and made at least four trips to the airport to better understand its surveillance. “This is someone who was determined to make this plot happen,” prosecutor Marshall Miller told the jury.
The Defense attorney Mildred Whalen argued that her client was just a big talker who had “seen too many Bruce Willis movies,” and had no real plans to execute the terrorist attack.
She called Defreitas a “man with a small mind, big mouth and an ugly imagination. But those are character traits, not a crime, according to WSJ. She and Kadir’s lawyer also argued that the informant - a convicted drug dealer - had tricked the two men into furthering the plot.
Kadir told the court last week that he wanted to maintain good relations with those involved in the plan for business reasons, but found the plot itself to be wrong.
“Islam does not support aggression or killing innocent people,” is what he claims to have to have told his alleged co-conspirators.
