Guyana

Mosque & Synagogue side by side, originally uploaded by davidtharby has wanderlust.

Just to give you an idea of what Guyana looks like - and the type of religious environment there.

More background on JFK's would-be bombers

Or the case of the want-more and the have-not.

The New York Times has some more background on the men who were arrested for plotting to blow up JFK airport.

Abdul Kadir, 55, the Guyanese imam, the Times reports, "was once a member of Parliament in Guyana and had been mayor of Linden, its second-largest city."

One of his co-conspirators, Russell M. Defreitas, 63, another Guyanese, was unemployed, living in the United States, and "estranged from some of his family and friends."

Though both mens were converts to Islam. But they couldn't have been more different. As the Times continues:

Mr. Kadir had been married for 35 years and had 9 children and 18 grandchildren. Mr. Defreitas was divorced and had apparently lost touch with his children, telling a friend that he was trying to track them down using the Internet. Mr. Kadir held a degree in civil engineering from the University of the West Indies at St. Augustine, in Trinidad and Tobago; Mr. Defreitas had trouble reading, and was homeless for a brief period, sleeping on subway trains.

What brought the two men together, the federal authorities said, was their Islamic extremism and a plot to blow up Kennedy Airport.

Mr. Kadir and Mr. Defreitas are accused of conspiring to use explosives to ignite the airport’s fuel tanks and underground fuel pipeline network. Both were arrested on Friday, Mr. Kadir in Trinidad and Mr. Defreitas in Brooklyn.

The Times report says he converted to Islam in 1972, having been influenced by Malcolm X as well as the pan-African movement. He studied Islamic theology in Iran and now one of his sons is a Shiite Muslim leader in Linden. His daughter described him by telephone to the Times:

“He is like any other dad: He’s strict, and he always told us we should respect others if we wanted to be respected,” Ms. Kadir, 31, said in a telephone interview from Guyana. “He taught us to be good people, and he taught us to be good Muslims. He is very serious about his religion.”

Ms. Kadir said her father was not anti-American. “The only thing I think my father did wrong was being a Muslim,” she said.

. . .He served as mayor of Linden from 1994 to 1996, and in 2001 he joined the Guyanese Parliament as a member of the opposition People’s National Congress, a seat he held until 2006. Judith David-Blair, a member of Parliament from the same party, said she did not believe Mr. Kadir could be involved in planning an attack on the United States. Members of Parliament would often seek his advice in political and personal matters, she said.

“I never knew him to be that kind of man,” she said of the charges. “He was a very kind man, a very caring father; he is a great provider and a very brilliant man, the kind you can always count on.”

As a board member of the Linden Fund, Mr. Kadir was in charge of receiving and disbursing money and supplies sent to Guyana by the fund’s supporters in the United States.

Last month, in one of the many conversations recorded by the informant, Mr. Defreitas, Mr. Ibrahim and the informant asked Mr. Kadir whether any money for an attack could be kept in Mr. Kadir’s foundation in Linden, and Mr. Kadir seemed to agree that it could, though it was unclear if the foundation discussed was the Linden Fund.

His cohort, Mr. Defreitas, on the other hand, was described by a friend as "a dreadlocked Rastafarian who used to whistle at the girls strolling past the window of his apartment," according to the Times report.

When he came to America, according to the Times sources, he tried to make a business of exporting air conditioners and refrigerators back to Guyana, but he never really became successful. Instead he ended up on welfare and sometime after 9/11, dreams of building a successful business were replaced by, according to the police informant, reports the Times "wanting to eclipse the attack on the World Trade Center."

Nevertheless, he didn't always seem to feel this level of hostility to his adopted country. As the Times continues:

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, [Mr. Defreitas and a friend] were watching television in [the friend,] Mr. Watts’s living room. “We saw the second plane hit,” Mr. Watts said. “We couldn’t even talk. He was in shock, just like me, just like everybody else.”