Top Stories

NEW YORK (CBS/AP) ― A fourth man accused in a plot to attack John F. Kennedy International Airport surrendered Tuesday as some U.S. authorities raised concerns about the potential for a Caribbean terror threat.

Abdel Nur, a Guyanese national accused of seeking support for the plot from the leader of a radical Muslim group in Trinidad, smiled as he turned himself in at a police station outside the capital, Port-of-Spain.

Nur has become Exhibit A for those who fear deep social inequality in the Caribbean could foster virulent anti-U.S. sentiment and even make the islands another recruiting ground for terrorists.

The 57-year-old suspect, who worked odd jobs at a currency exchange house and lived in a poor neighborhood in Guyana, seemed to dismiss such concerns as he entered a courthouse later Tuesday.

"It is a conspiracy and a setup," a smiling Nur told reporters. "America never did me anything."

Though the Caribbean is largely known as a tourist paradise, the twin-island nation of Trinidad and Tobago, with a population of about 1.3 million, stands out as an exception: It is the most industrialized nation in the region and the largest supplier of liquid natural gas to the United States. The capital seems to have sprouted skyscrapers in recent years, thanks to the natural gas boom.

The country also has good relations with the United States, a fact noted by the FBI.

"I am confident that the pressure brought to bear by the Trinidadian police authorities contributed to his surrender," said Mark Mershon, the head of the FBI in New York. "We are very grateful for their tremendous cooperation in this investigation."

But New York police Commissioner Ray Kelly spoke of a potential Caribbean threat when he disclosed the plot to blow up fuel pipelines that feed the airport.

"This is an area in which we have growing concern and I think requires a lot more focus," Kelly said.

Trinidad, which is about 6 percent Muslim, is home to Jamaat al Muslimeen, a radical group that staged the only Islamic revolt in the Western Hemisphere, a deadly 1990 coup attempt sparked by still unresolved land claims.

Nur is accused of meeting with the group's leader, Yasin Abu Bakr, in an unsuccessful effort to get support for the airport attack. Abu Bakr told The Associated Press on Monday that his group had no connection to the New York plot.

Trinidad is not a hotbed of anti-Americanism -- in fact, its U.S. ties are substantial and growing: About 20,000 U.S. citizens visit the islands each year for tourism and business, and about 4,600 claim residency in the country, according to the Department of State. The U.S. in turn is home to thousands of people of Trinidadian descent.

Still, it is not difficult to find resentment among poorer residents of Port-of-Spain. Some in the capital say the U.S. shares blame with the Trinidadian government for poverty that lingers despite an economy that grew 12 percent last year.

"All America wants to do is dominate," said house cleaner Alistair Augustine, voicing a sentiment that's common in the working-class neighborhoods on the capital's west side.

Augustine, a Muslim convert, attends a small one-story mosque in the island nation, which is home to about 80,000 Muslims.

Such social discontent could make people in the region vulnerable to recruitment by terrorists outside the region, said Anthony Bryan, a senior associate at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"It would have to be considered, because many of the cells are now global," Bryan said.

A former CIA terrorism expert, Mike Ackerman, noted Caribbean natives have been involved in terrorism -- including Jamaican-born London transit bomber Jermaine Lindsay -- but only after they were exposed to radical Islam elsewhere.

Besides Nur, Trinidadian authorities are holding two suspects in the New York plot: Abdul Kadir, a former Guyanese lawmaker, and Kareem Ibrahim, of Trinidad. The two are fighting extradition to the United States.

A magistrate ordered Nur held until a bail hearing Monday, when Kadir and Ibrahim also are due to appear.

The other named suspect, Russell Defreitas, is a former JFK air cargo employee who was arrested in New York. He is a U.S. citizen native to Guyana, a former Dutch and British colony on the northern coast of South America.

Huda Ibrahim, a daughter of the one Trinidadian suspect, denied that her father or Kadir had any role in an airport plot. She said they were set up by a U.S. government informant posing as an Islamic missionary.

"The source visited our brothers with the specific intent to entrap them in activities they know nothing about, never greed to and did not participate in," she said.

She read a statement to reporters she said was written on behalf of the local Shiite Muslim community, saying the two men are "absolutely innocent."

The community deplores the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks "as much as we deplore the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki," she said.

(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)