[New York Times] Cara Buckley and William K. Rashbaum - Four men, including a onetime airport cargo handler - Russell Defreitas, 63, a Guyanese native and naturalized American citizen who lives in Brooklyn - were charged Saturday with plotting to blow up fuel tanks, terminal buildings and the web of fuel lines running beneath Kennedy International Airport. Mark J. Mershon, the assistant director in charge of the FBI field office in New York, said all four men had "fundamentalist Islamic beliefs of a violent nature." Law enforcement officials said the plot was only in a preliminary phase and the conspirators had yet to lay out detailed plans or obtain financing or explosives. Officials said the four men conducted "precise and extensive" surveillance of the airport using photographs, video, the recollections of Defreitas, and satellite images downloaded from Google Earth.
2007-06-04 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive