By Michael V. Cusenza
Abdul Kadir, who schemed to set fire to a network of fuel pipelines leading to John F. Kennedy International Airport more than a decade ago, has died in prison, according to federal officials and published reports.
He was 66.
Kadir, Russell Defreitas, Kareem Ibrahim, and Abdel Nur were arrested in June 2007. Kadir, Defreitas, and Ibrahim were convicted of numerous counts of conspiracy to attack and destroy U.S. infrastructure. Each was sentenced to life in federal prison. Nur pleaded guilty to providing material support to the plot to attack the airport. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison in January 2011.
According to federal prosecutors, between November 2006 and June 2007 the crew hatched a plan to ignite the Buckeye Pipeline, a vast, 200,000-mile underground grid of pipes that originates in Linden, N.J., and runs underneath many borough communities, including Howard Beach, and supplies jet fuel and other petroleum products to JFK and LaGuardia airports.
Defreitas, identified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation Joint Terrorism Task Force as the plot’s mastermind, was a former JFK Airport cargo worker who longed to spark a catastrophic incident that “even the Twin Towers can’t touch.”
Officials tracked the crew through a government informant.
