Feds: Informant key to foiling alleged JFK plot

Authorities said the JFK scheme was an example of homegrown terrorism. Defreitas, 63, immigrated to the U.S. more than 30 years ago, but he told the federal informant that his feelings of disgust toward his adopted homeland had lingered for years.

“Before terrorism started in this country,” he said in one secretly recorded conversation.

Defreitas was arrested Friday night outside Brooklyn’s Lindenwood Diner — a spot once bugged by federal officials tracking former Gambino family boss John A. “Junior” Gotti.

The four Muslim men accused in the JFK plot didn’t turn to Pakistan, Iran or Afghanistan for support after targeting the airport, home to an average of 1,000 daily flights and 45 million passengers annually.

Instead, according to a federal complaint, the informant, Ibrahim and Defreitas visited a compound belonging to Jamaat al Muslimeen, a radical Islamic group known for launching a bloody 1990 coup attempt in Trinidad that involved taking the prime minister and his Cabinet hostage. It left 24 people dead.

Radical 'brothers'
Though Jamaat al Muslimeen did have contact with the men accused in the Kennedy airport plot, it is not accused of offering them any support. The group, whose followers are largely black converts to Sunni Islam, has faded as a political force in Trinidad as its leader, Yasin Abu Bakr, fends off criminal charges of inciting violence.

The rebels in the 1990 raid on Parliament surrendered and were pardoned.

When Defreitas discussed his radical “brothers” with the informant, he made it clear they were not Arabs, but from Trinidad and Guyana.

The complaint made clear the informant had deeply infiltrated the group. Defreitas, a retired JFK airport cargo worker, made four reconnaissance missions to the airport, authorities said. They captured each one on audio and video equipment.

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