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From Los Angeles Times

Supreme Court upholds Arizona immigration law targeting employers

The high court ruling allows the state, and others, to penalize businesses that hire illegal immigrants.

by David G. Savage, Washington Bureau

May 26, 2011

Reporting from Washington

The Supreme Court gave a big boost to proponents of stricter state laws against illegal immigration by upholding Arizona's "business death penalty" for employers who repeatedly hire undocumented workers.

The 5-3 ruling gives more states a green light to target those who employ illegal immigrants. And because it rejected the contention that the state was interfering with the federal government's authority over immigration, the decision also encouraged supporters of Arizona's even more controversial immigration law. That law, which requires police to check the immigration status of people they lawfully stop and who they suspect are in the country illegally, will soon come before the court.

The ruling said Arizona could deny employers a business license after a second violation of its Legal Arizona Workers Act of 2007. Also upheld was Arizona's requirement that employers check with the federal E-Verify program before hiring workers.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said Arizona's licensing law "falls well within the confines of the authority Congress chose to leave to the states," rebuffing challenges from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Obama administration and civil rights groups.

The ruling on the employment question sets the stage for a high court showdown as early as next year in the even bigger battle over Arizona's mandate for police detention of people they suspect are in the U.S. illegally, known as SB 1070.

Last summer, the Obama administration sued Arizona to block that law. A federal judge and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the administration that it interfered with federal enforcement prerogatives and put the law on hold.

Opponents and proponents of that law had dueling interpretations of the significance of Thursday's ruling.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said she was "hopeful and optimistic" the high court would hear the state's appeal later this year and revive SB 1070.

The law won Arizona nationwide fame as well as infamy. Brewer's popularity skyrocketed, and polls showed SB 1070 widely popular statewide. But the law also prompted noisy protests, a recall drive against the bill's author and boycotts that, by some estimates, cost the state millions of dollars.

Peter Spiro, a Temple University law professor, said the outcome did not guarantee Arizona's police measure would be upheld. "SB 1070 pushes the envelope. It's a different case," he said. "But this is definitely a victory for those who are pushing restrictive immigration measures in state houses."

Immigrant rights lawyers called the court's decision disappointing but narrow.

"State legislators considering this decision a free pass to enact legislation targeting immigrants are gravely mistaken," said Linton Joaquin, general counsel for the National Immigration Law Center.

In his majority opinion, Roberts noted that eight other states had passed laws similar to Arizona's that punish employers for hiring illegal workers. They are Colorado, Mississippi, Missouri, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

The ruling may revive a local ordinance in Hazleton, Pa., that would take away business licenses from landlords who rented to illegal immigrants. The measure was struck down by a federal appeals court in Philadelphia, but an appeal is pending in the Supreme Court.

The heart of Thursday's decision centered on a few words in a 1986 federal immigration law. It said states and localities could not impose "criminal or civil sanctions (other than through licensing and similar laws) upon those who employ … authorized aliens."

Shortly after then-Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano signed in 2007 what she called the "business death penalty" for employers who hired illegal workers, civil rights groups and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sued. They argued its provisions were sanctions and, therefore, were barred by federal law. But they lost before a federal district court and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Supreme Court affirmed those decisions Thursday in Chamber of Commerce vs. Whiting.

Roberts said there was a "high threshold" for striking down a state law on the grounds that it conflicted with a federal law, a passage welcomed by Arizona's top officials. Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined to form the majority.

In dissent were Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor. They said the majority's interpretation overrides the 1986 provision barring sanctions against employers. It could also permit "discrimination [against] legal workers who look or sound foreign," Breyer said. Justice Elena Kagan recused herself from the case.

Robin Conrad, executive vice president of the National Chamber Litigation Center, the legal arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the decision would lead to a "growing patchwork" of immigration laws across the country, creating obstacles for those conducting business across state lines.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, plans to introduce a bill that would require all U.S. employers to use the Web-based verification system E-Verify during the hiring process.

"I will introduce legislation soon to expand E-Verify and make it mandatory across the United States," Smith said in a statement Thursday.

In the course of drafting the law, Smith has held meetings with the business community and plans to include a safe-harbor provision that would protect employers who have made a good faith effort to use the federal database. The bill could also phase in the requirement for small businesses.

More than 250,000 employers currently use the federal immigration database on a voluntary basis, and approximately 1,300 new employers enroll in the program each week. Use of E-Verify is required for all companies that receive federal contracts.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-immigration-ruling-20110526,0,6071787,print.story

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Immigration: You can't rely on E-Verify

The Supreme Court has upheld a measure that imposes sanctions on employers who knowingly hire illegal workers. But it relies on E-Verify, which is inaccurate and has provisions that must be fixed.

May 27, 2011

On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an Arizona law that permits local officials to revoke the licenses of businesses that knowingly hire illegal workers. The decision makes sense in principle but not in practice.

Under the 2007 Legal Arizona Workers Act, business owners are required to use the federal E-Verify program to confirm if a person is authorized to work in this country. Employers must electronically check workers' names against databases kept by the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security. Workers found to be ineligible have up to eight working days to straighten out the problem before employers would be required to fire them. If a company is found to have knowingly hired an undocumented worker once, it can have its licenses suspended; twice, the company may be shut down.

The problem with the Arizona statute is not that it penalizes employers who break the law. Businesses that hire undocumented immigrants should face fines or sanctions, as called for under current federal law (although many would disagree with the court's conclusion that states may impose such penalties). The problem is that the law relies on E-Verify, which isn't ready for prime time.

Until now, E-Verify has generally been used on a voluntary basis by employers because of concerns about its accuracy. Conservative estimates put the program's error rate at just under 1% — meaning that one out of every 100 legal job applicants could be found ineligible to work. Nearly half of those will not be able to fix the problem even though they are citizens or legal workers, according to the National Immigration Law Center. The reality is that the error rate may be much higher. Consider that in 2008, Intel Corp. reported that just over 12% of its workers were wrongly tagged as ineligible, according to the Migration Policy Center in Washington. Or that a survey by Los Angeles County of employees found an error rate of 2.7 in 2008 and 2.0 in 2009, according to a report submitted to the Board of Supervisors. The error rate is especially high in cities with large immigrant communities.

Furthermore, E-Verify doesn't detect identity theft or prevent unscrupulous employers from moving their workforce off the books. Nor does the law guarantee employers that they will be immune from losing their licenses if E-Verify mistakenly allows them to hire an undocumented worker. That lack of protection may, as Justice Stephen G. Breyer noted in his dissent, persuade some business owners to avoid hiring those who look or sound foreign-born.

At the very least, the court's ruling should prompt the Obama administration to act quickly to fix E-Verify and improve its accuracy. And the White House should seek a qualified candidate to serve as the Justice Department's special counsel in charge of enforcing the anti-discrimination provisions of the immigration law.

But the court's ruling doesn't fix the bigger problem: the need for comprehensive immigration reform. Arizona and other states that have passed similar measures are stumbling to create their own immigration laws because the current system isn't working. Thursday's decision should put Washington on notice that in the absence of a federal solution, states will step in to fill the void.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-arizona-20110527,0,6142201,print.story

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More than 200 in Joplin unaccounted for since tornado, officials say

Missouri officials have yet to list the names of the dead, pending positive identifications. Families of those missing since the tornado are frustrated because without any confirmation of death, they have to keep searching.

by Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times

May 26, 2011

Reporting from Joplin, Mo.

Missouri officials announced Thursday that more than 200 residents of Joplin remain unaccounted for in the wake of the massive tornado that swept through the city. Mark Lindquist, however, is not among them.

For agonizing hours in the wake of Sunday's storm, Lindquist's sister, Linda Lindquist-Baldwin, and other family members combed the area around the group home for the disabled where the 51-year-old Joplin resident had been working when the twister struck. Most of the people in the building had been found dead. Could Lindquist have lived?

His family members scoured the debris and called every hospital within 100 miles. They approached officials at the morgue where bodies of the 126 confirmed dead have been gathered. No one knew. Then, they heard that an unidentified man was in the intensive care unit at Freeman Hospital West.

But the man was unconscious, his face so swollen he was unrecognizable.

"The one thing about him is he has hazel eyes, and in one eye, there's a little brown fleck. They looked, and the little brown fleck was there," Lindquist-Baldwin said Thursday, not long after leaving her brother's room in the intensive care unit. The now-identified Lindquist remains there in guarded condition with substantial injuries to his lungs.

"They say it's going to be a long, uphill battle. But he's young, and he's healthy, and he's such a fighter."

Since the tornado struck, Joplin has been wrestling with spotty phone service, chaotic traffic, destroyed records and imperfect coordination among disaster relief agencies, even as families around the country have been struggling to determine the whereabouts of missing friends and relatives.

By Wednesday, the city manager's office had logged 7,000 such queries, a logjam that prompted Gov. Jay Nixon to announce Thursday that Department of Public Safety investigators had taken on the task of identifying the missing and had narrowed the confirmed list to 232. By the end of the day, that number had shrunk by 13 names as people with information stepped forward.

"We will keep a relentless focus on search, rescue and identification of those 232 people, and we will not rest until everyone has been accounted for and that number is zero," Nixon told hundreds of people at a meeting on government assistance services.

With no list of the names of the dead officially published, many family members have grown increasingly frustrated. But officials at the federal Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team have said they will release no names until forensic evidence, including dental records, fingerprints, or other physical identifying marks, confirms identities.

Seven such identifications were completed Thursday, said Doug Nelson, a staffer at the governor's office.

"They have got to be 100% accurate before they deliver the news to the family," Nelson said. Positive identifications have been delayed, he said, because so many doctors' offices and dental clinics were destroyed by the tornado.

"Just getting the medical records is a challenge," he said.

For families with no confirmation that their missing relative is dead, there is little choice but to continue searching. Some have started Facebook pages; more than 40,000 people have "liked" the FindWillNorton page for 18-year-old Will Norton. He was on his way home from the graduation ceremony at Joplin High School with his father when the twister rushed over their car, pulling Norton through the sunroof.

"Everyone, tears are finally coming more frequently," the teenager's aunt, Tracey Presslor, who has been acting as a coordinator of the public outreach effort, posted Thursday afternoon. "Nothing has been this hard. Still no Will."

Sharyn Dawson, who has been looking for her husband's 74-year-old mother, Patricia Dawson, said she understands the difficulty of confirming victims, which has left her with little choice but to keep looking until there is news.

Dawson and her husband have spent days searching around her mother-in-law's now-smashed apartment building. On Wednesday, 15 large men from Genesis Metro Church showed up unannounced at the scene, asking whether they could help.

"We don't even know them. But those big guys, they helped move some of the heaviest stuff. They just made work of it like it was nothing."

But the results were — nothing.

"I don't want to jump on that bandwagon of people who have been screaming and yelling about how this process has worked. They don't understand how the process works. Neither do I," Dawson said.

"But I am almost to that place where I really want to know if she's in the morgue so I can quit wondering what happened."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-tornado-frustration-20110527,0,6259397,print.story

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FBI investigating 91-year-old woman's mail-order suicide kits

The FBI carried out search warrants this week at the home of a 91-year-old San Diego County woman who allegedly sells do-it-yourself suicide kits in the mail.

Witnesses told KTLA News that agents removed computers and other records from the home of Sharlotte Hydorn on Wednesday.

The Associated Press reported that an Oregon man used one of the suicide kits to take his life earlier this year. According to AP's Tami Abdollah:

The death of 29-year-old Nick Klonoski has prompted Oregon lawmakers to consider outlawing the sale of suicide kits as they respond to a disturbing twist on the assisted suicide debate in the state. Law enforcement officials are also looking into the 91-year-old woman who sold the "helium hood" that killed Klonoski, with agents raiding her California home on Wednesday. The Oregon legislation, prompted by a March story in The Register-Guard of Eugene about Klonoski's death, would make it a felony to sell or transfer "any substance or objects to another person knowing" that person plans to use it to kill themselves.

Hydorn could not be reached for comment.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/05/fbi-investigating-91-year-old-womans-mail-order-suicide-kits.html

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Cutting California's prison rolls

The mistaken release of violent felons shows it won't be easy. But it doesn't have to lead to more crime.

May 27, 2011

As some commentators — and some rightward-leaning justices on the U.S. Supreme Court — would have it, it's time for Californians to lock their doors and bar their windows, because the court's majority this week upheld a federal court order for the Golden State to shed more than 30,000 inmates from its prison population within two years. But are "terrible things sure to happen" as a result of the ruling, as Justice Antonin Scalia stated in his dissenting opinion? A report released Wednesday by the state's inspector general makes Scalia's words look prophetic, yet crime statistics suggest such fears may be groundless.

Amid the media attention focused on the Supreme Court ruling Monday, little notice was paid to the fact that California has already taken important steps to reduce its prison population, and they didn't result in pandemonium in the streets. From an average of about 158,000 inmates in 2009, the system now holds about 143,000, largely because of reforms approved by the Legislature a year and a half ago.

Now, rather than automatically placing every released convict on parole, the state assesses inmates' risk of reoffending and places nonviolent criminals deemed at low risk on "non-revocable parole." This means they aren't supervised and can only be sent back to prison for a new felony, not simply for violating the terms of their parole. It was a smart reform that reduced the prison rolls while also freeing up parole officers to focus on genuinely dangerous ex-cons.

But according to the inspector general, it has a glitch: The computer tool used to assess inmate risk is flawed. State inspectors sampled a list of inmates placed on non-revocable parole in July 2010 and found that 15% of them shouldn't have been eligible. As a result, they estimated that in the first seven months of the program, 450 violent offenders were improperly released. Corrections officials say many of the problems identified last July have been fixed, but the inspector general estimates the error rate is still 8%. That's too high for comfort.

Some of the problems with the state's assessment tool, which looks at an inmate's criminal background and behavior in custody, can be remedied with relative ease, while other fixes might require money that lawmakers are ill-prepared to invest in the midst of a budget crisis. Either way, the inspector general's report shows that even the best-designed prison depopulation scheme can go wrong — and potentially endanger the public — if it's poorly implemented.

News of the database glitches is likely to reduce public confidence that California can comply with the order to cut its prison population to 110,000 without sparking a crime wave. After all, if the state isn't sure who's dangerous, how can it possibly decide which inmates should remain in custody? Current plans call for shifting tens of thousands of nonviolent convicts from state prisons to county jails, but how can we be sure that corrections officials won't send truly dangerous felons to the counties? Before this happens, every step possible must be taken to improve the state's systems for classifying prisoners.

Worrisome as the inspector general's report is, it doesn't tell us anything about the impact of prison cuts on crime. With fewer felons in custody, is the public less safe? Not necessarily, according to recent statistics.

State and federal agencies this week released figures showing that crime rates fell significantly in 2010, following a similarly big drop in 2009. The falling numbers (violent crime was down 5.5%, according to the FBI, and property crimes fell 2.8%) are a puzzle to criminal justice experts because they contradict the long-held notion that crime rises in times of economic decline and high joblessness. But they contradict something else as well: The idea, suggested by Scalia and others, that smaller prison populations result in greater lawlessness.

The percentage of Americans behind bars has been falling for years, and last year the Pew Center on the States noted that the total population of state prisons in the U.S. had declined in 2009 for the first time since 1972. Some of that drop resulted from the drop in crime (if fewer people are breaking the law, you'd expect to have fewer people in prison), but another key factor identified by the Pew center was that many states, under budgetary and other pressures, took responsible steps to find alternatives for nonviolent offenders. For example, Michigan cut its prison population by 6,000 over the course of three years, mainly by revising its parole rules. Texas halted its rapid prison growth by investing in community treatment and diversion programs. And Mississippi, like California, reduced recidivism by coming up with a new tool for assessing the risk of reoffending posed by parolees.

The biggest cuts in the prison rolls, though, occurred in the Golden State — whose crime rate dropped significantly at the same time. According to preliminary figures released this week by the California Department of Justice, violent crimes fell 6.4% in 2010 and the murder rate plunged 9.6%.

This doesn't necessarily predict what will happen after 33,000 inmates are trimmed from California's prisons — no state has tried such a radical shift before. And no one can say for sure that last year's prison population cuts didn't result in more crimes (maybe violent crime would have dropped even more if not for the parole reforms). But it does show that there's not an automatic connection between reduced incarceration and increased crime. It's not going to be easy for California to bring its prisons up to the minimal standards required under the Constitution without endangering the public, but it is possible.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-crime-20110527,0,3708052.story

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From the New York Times

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When Children's Scribbles Hide a Prison Drug

by ABBY GOODNOUGH and KATIE ZEZIMA

WINDHAM, Me. — Mike Barrett, a corrections officer, ripped open an envelope in the mail room at the Maine Correctional Center here and eyed something suspicious: a Father's Day card, sent a month early. He carefully felt the card and slit it open, looking for a substance that has made mail call here a different experience of late.

Mr. Barrett and other prison officials nationwide are searching their facilities, mail and visitors for Suboxone, a drug used as a treatment for opiate addiction that has become coveted as contraband. Innovative smugglers have turned crushed Suboxone pills into a paste and spread it under stamps or over children's artwork, including pages from a princess coloring book found in a New Jersey jail.

The drug also comes in thin strips, which dissolve under the tongue, that smugglers have tucked behind envelope seams and stamps.

“It's become a crisis in here, to be honest with you,” said Maj. Francine Breton, administrator of the Cumberland County Jail in Portland, Me. “It's the drug of choice right now.”

Law enforcement officials say that Suboxone, which is prescribed to treat addiction to heroin and powerful painkillers like oxycodone, has become a drug of abuse in its own right, resulting in prison smuggling efforts from New Mexico to Maine. Addicts buy it on the street when they cannot find or afford their drug of choice, to stave off the sickness that comes with withdrawal. But some people are also taking it for the high they say it provides.

After Suboxone strips were discovered in two letters, the Cumberland County Jail set a new rule in March that all inmate mail must arrive in white envelopes. That way, Major Breton said, officials can detect the orange tint of the strips when they hold an envelope up to the light.

The jail also rips the stamps off every piece of mail before delivery because senders were putting a paste made of crushed Suboxone pills on the back of stamps for inmates to lick off.

The Maine Correctional Center tightened its mail policy in 2009 specifically because of Suboxone smuggling. Officials there remove all mail from envelopes before delivering it, then send the envelopes to the “burn barrel.” Any mail containing crayon scribblings, stickers, glitter glue or any “foreign substance” is not delivered.

“We've had too many people dry the stuff onto the pages, then get a kid to color over it,” said Capt. Mark James, who supervises the mail room, adding that Suboxone has at times been discovered on a daily basis.

In Nesquehoning, Pa., officials at the Carbon County Correctional Facility intercepted three letters with Suboxone strips under the stamps in January and later charged five inmates and six others, including a son of one of the prisoners, with conspiring to smuggle the drug into the prison.

In February, three coloring book pages, including two depicting Snow White and Cinderella, sent to a prisoner in the Cape May County jail, were splotched with the words “To Daddy” and an orange substance that turned out to be Suboxone.

In Massachusetts, Suboxone makes up 12 percent of all contraband discovered in state prisons, said Terrel Harris, a spokesman for the state's Executive Office of Public Safety. And in New Mexico, prison officials foil attempts to smuggle Suboxone to inmates about once a week, said Shannon McReynolds, a spokesman for the New Mexico Corrections Department.

“Typically what inmates will try to do is quarter the pill up and sell it for $25 a hit,” Mr. McReynolds said.

The Food and Drug Administration approved Suboxone in 2002 as the first narcotic that doctors could prescribe for addiction to opiates. Seen as a more convenient alternative to methadone, which can be dispensed only at federally licensed clinics, it blocks the effects of opiates while reducing cravings and easing withdrawal symptoms.

A spokeswoman for Reckitt Benckiser, the drug's manufacturer, said in an e-mail that the company was “aware that a certain level of Suboxone diversion and abuse exists,” and that it had taken steps to counter it.

To deter abuse, Suboxone contains naloxone, a substance that precipitates withdrawal symptoms when the drug is injected. Suboxone also has a ceiling effect, with the effect leveling off after a certain dosage.

But users can experience euphoria, especially if they do not take it regularly, and Suboxone, whose main ingredient is buprenorphine, is increasingly sold on the street in New England and other regions where it is commonly prescribed.

A Brown University study in 2009 found that only seven state prison systems offered buprenorphine treatment to inmates, and only under narrow circumstances.

The Maine Civil Liberties Union sued last year on behalf of a woman who was arrested on a traffic violation while taking Suboxone for opiate addiction but not allowed to continue her treatment in jail. The parties settled out of court, but Zachary Heiden, the group's legal director, said he would continue to press for Suboxone treatment in the state's jails.

“If they're not providing a way for inmates to treat their addictions,” he said, “it makes sense that they're using unlawful means to get that treatment.”

Others are probably seeking a high, though some experts interviewed said they were puzzled as to why Suboxone would be more sought after than other opiate drugs.

“Maybe some people think it's a safer opiate to abuse because of the ceiling effect,” said Dr. Daniel P. Alford, a professor at the Boston University School of Medicine who runs a Suboxone clinic at Boston Medical Center.

Or, he added, “Maybe there is some mystique about it.”

Captain James described Suboxone as more “adaptable” than other drugs, suggesting that it is easier for smugglers to manipulate.

William Lawhorn, the director of facility operations for the Vermont Department of Corrections, said Suboxone was the predominant contraband in the state's prisons. Mr. Lawhorn said corrections officers have found crushed Suboxone in shoes and the spines of magazines. So many people were sewing Suboxone pills into the seams of clothing and stuffing it into the drawstrings of sweat pants, he said, that one women's prison would repeatedly wash and dry on high heat every piece of clothing sent in care packages.

At the Maine Correctional Facility one recent morning, Mr. Barrett sat at a table in the windowless mail room, slicing open dozens of envelopes. He carefully inspected a photograph and scraped two stamps off a postcard. A card with purple stickers was to be returned to its sender, as was a letter doused in perfume, a technique Mr. Barrett said was sometimes used to try to fool drug-sniffing dogs. The week before, he said, a child's picture tested positive for drugs.

“Every time a drawing comes in from a child you have to scrutinize it because it might not be from a kid,” he said. “It's sad.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/27/us/27smuggle.html

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From the FBI

Imam from Trinidad Convicted of Conspiracy to Launch Terrorist Attack at JFK Airport

Defendant Plotted to Explode Fuel Tanks and Pipeline at Airport

BROOKLYN, NY—Following a four-week jury trial, Kareem Ibrahim was convicted today in the Eastern District of New York of conspiring to attack John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York, by exploding fuel tanks and the fuel pipeline under the airport. The defendant believed the attack would cause extensive damage to the airport and to the United States economy, as well as the loss of innocent lives. The defendant faces a sentence of up to life in prison. Sentencing has been scheduled for October 21, 2011.

The convictions were announced by Loretta E. Lynch, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, and Janice K. Fedarcyk, Assistant Director in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Field Office. The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York.

The evidence at trial established that Kareem Ibrahim, an Imam and leader of the Shiite Muslim community in Trinidad and Tobago, provided religious instruction and operational support to a group plotting to commit a terrorist attack at JFK Airport. The plot originated with Russell Defreitas, a naturalized United States citizen from Guyana, who drew on his prior experience working at JFK Airport as a cargo handler to plan the attack on its fuel tanks and fuel pipeline. Beginning in 2006, Defreitas recruited others to join the plot, including the defendant Kareem Ibrahim, Abdel Nur and Abdul Kadir, a former member of parliament in Guyana.

In May 2007, Defreitas presented defendant Kareem Ibrahim with video surveillance and satellite imagery of the targets for terrorist attack because Ibrahim had connections with militant leaders in Iran. During cross-examination at trial, Ibrahim admitted that he advised the plotters to present the plot to revolutionary leaders in Iran and to use operatives ready to engage in suicide attacks at the airport. On one of the recorded conversations entered into evidence, Ibrahim told Defreitas that the attackers must be ready to “fight it out, kill who you could kill and go back to Allah.”

According to the trial evidence, the conspirators also attempted to enlist support for the plot from prominent international terrorist groups and leaders, including Adnan El Shukrijumah, an al Qaeda leader and explosives expert, and Yasin Abu Bakr, leader of the Trinidadian militant group Jamaat Al Muslimeen. Ultimately, the plotters followed Ibrahim's direction and sent Abdul Kadir to meet with his contacts in the Iranian revolutionary leadership, including Mohsen Rabbani, the former cultural attache indicted for his leading role in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Kareem Ibrahim, Nur and Kadir were arrested in Trinidad in June 2007, with Kadir aboard a plane headed to Venezuela, en route to Iran. All three were subsequently extradited to the United States. Defreitas was arrested in New York. After a trial in 2010, Russell Defreitas and Abdul Kadir were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. Nur pleaded guilty before trial to supporting the plot and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The specific charges Ibrahim was convicted of are: conspiracy to attack a public transportation system, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2332f; conspiracy to destroy a building by fire or explosive, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 844(n); conspiracy to attack aircraft and aircraft materials, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 32; conspiracy to destroy international airport facilities, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 37; and conspiracy to attack a mass transportation facility, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1992(a)(10).

“In pursuit of a radical terrorist agenda, bent on the destruction of John F. Kennedy Airport and the murder of innocent civilians, Imam Kareem Ibrahim abandoned the true tenets of his religion,” stated United States Attorney Lynch. “We will continue to seek out and bring to justice all those who plot to attack the United States and its people.” Ms. Lynch extended her grateful appreciation to the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York for its role in investigating and assisting in the prosecution of the case, as well as to the Guyanese and Trinidadian law enforcement authorities who assisted with the investigation and apprehension of the defendants.

“Ibrahim and his co-conspirators had elaborate plans to attack John F. Kennedy International Airport, not only to cause carnage, but also to damage the economy,” said FBI Assistant Director in Charge Fedarcyk. “Today's guilty verdict is not only a victory for the American justice system, it is also a rejection of the extremist ideology he supported.”

The government's case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Marshall L. Miller, Berit W. Berger and Zainab Ahmad.

The Defendant:

KAREEM IBRAHIM, also known as “Amir Kareem” and “Winston Kingston” -- Age: 65

.