NEW YORK, June 3: Four men from the Caribbean have been charged with plotting to blow up fuel tanks, terminal buildings and the web of fuel lines running beneath Kennedy International Airport.
They include a one-time airport cargo handler and a former member of parliament of Guyana. They had no known connection with Al Qaeda, one FBI official told the media on Saturday.
One of the suspects was taken into custody in Brooklyn (New York) and two others were detained in Trinidad, the authorities said, while the fourth man was still at large.
Mr Russell Defreitas was arraigned on Friday in federal court in Brooklyn. He is a 63-year-old Guyanese native and naturalised American citizen who lives in Brooklyn.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said all four men had “fundamentalist Islamic beliefs of a violent nature,” although they appeared to be acting on their own and had no known connection to Al Qaeda.
Law-enforcement officials said that Kennedy Airport, which handles roughly 45 million passengers a year and 1,000 flights a day, was never in imminent danger because the plot was only in a preliminary phase and the conspirators had yet to lay out detailed plans or obtain financing or explosives.
The airport is fed jet fuel, gasoline and heating oil through a capillary system of pipes that run from New Jersey through Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens.
Oil industry experts said safety shut-off valves would almost assuredly have prevented an exploding airport fuel tank from igniting all or even part of the network.
While it is true that the tanks at Kennedy Airport are connected to a network of underground pipes that run from New Jersey through Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens, an exploding tank should not ignite the pipeline, they said.
The pipes, which carry jet fuel, gasoline and heating oil, have valves that can be operated from headquarters in Pennsylvania to cut off the flow if sensors indicate that there might be a leak or rupture, said Roy Haase, an official of Buckeye Partners, the company that operates the pipeline told a local newspaper.
