A former Guyanese politician has been sentenced to life in prison for plotting to blow up fuel tanks at John F. Kennedy International Airport.Abdul Kadir, 56, once the mayor of Guyana’s second-largest city, Linden, and a former member of the country’s Parliament, sat quietly as Judge Dora L. Irizarry of Federal District Court in Brooklyn gave him the life sentence on Wednesday.
“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,” she said, adding that he had taken part in “a plan that would clearly cause devastation unimaginable.”
In a statement that lasted more than 30 minutes, Kadir insisted that he was not guilty.
“The God that created us all and knows our inner thoughts knows I’m innocent,” he said.
“At no time did I ever pose a threat to any person or property in this country,” he added.
But Judge Irizarry dismissed that claim.
“Forgive me if I don’t buy into your statement,” she said before handing down the maximum sentence.
Kadir’s lawyer, Kafahni Nkrumah, had asked Judge Irizarry for a 15-year sentence, saying the detonation scheme would have been next to impossible to carry out.
“There was no harm that could have come to anyone despite the grandiose plan,” he said.
But a US federal prosecutor, Marshall L. Miller, said that Kadir had taken concrete steps to advance a plan that sought to “dwarf 9/11” and “harm America.”
Kadir was one of several Caribbean men who federal prosecutors said had schemed to detonate the tanks, believing that the explosions would set off a chain reaction along a fuel pipeline through much of New York City.
The bulk of the evidence in the case came from Steven Francis, a convicted drug dealer and paid informer, who contributed financial and logistical support to the plotters.
Francis secretly recorded conversations in which the men planned the attack.
Prosecutors said the ringleader was Russell M Defretas, a Guyanese immigrant and US citizen, who had worked at the airport as a cargo handler and who, along with Kadir, was arrested in 2007 and convicted in August after a month-long trial.
Prosecutors said the men wanted to outdo the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and sought the help of militant Muslims, including an al Qaida operative, in Guyana.
