DAR AL HARB/ISLAM - GUYANA: A 2004 MURDER OF AN IMAM - - - A CLOSE FRIEND OF ONE OF THE JFK BOMB PLOT

Murdered Muslim cleric had links to JFK plot suspect
by Jacqueline Charles

GEORGETOWN, Guyana - As murder mysteries here go, few are as intriguing as the execution-style killing of an Iranian Muslim cleric with links to a key suspect in the alleged JFK airport bombing plot.

Mohamed Hassan Ibrahimi was abducted by two gunmen in April 2004. His body was found several weeks later, face down in a shallow grave. He had been shot twice in the head. His mouth was taped and his hands and feet were tied.

The homicide made a brief splash and then turned into a cold case over the next three years - until earlier this month, when prosecutors in New York charged three Guyanese men and one Trinidadian with plotting to bomb the city's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Ibrahimi was a close friend of one of the men accused, Abdul Kadir, a former opposition member of Guyana's parliament. Ibrahimi received money from Iran and changed it at a currency exchange business where another of the accused, Abdel Nur, sometimes ran errands, and where a suspected al Qaeda member and former South Florida resident wanted by the FBI, Adnan el Shukrijumah, was spotted in 2003. The business' owner was slain last month.

Kadir, Nur and Trinidadian Kareem Ibrahiim are jailed in Trinidad pending U.S. extradition requests. The fourth man accused, Russell Defreitas, a Guyanese-born U.S. citizen, is being held in New York. Two of Kadir's sons were arrested in Guyana on Sunday on charges of illegal possession of ammunition.

At the time of Ibrahimi's disappearance and death, Guyana's Muslim organizations were quick to deny speculation that the case was linked to international terrorism or clashes between Shiites and Sunnis. Other speculation centered on a robbery attempt gone bad or a settling of business scores.

Acting Guyana Police Chief Henry Greene told The Miami Herald he would not speculate on who killed Ibrahimi or why.

''Initially, we felt it was a kidnapping. But there was no demand for a ransom,'' said Greene, who was head of criminal investigations at the time. ''We could not find a motive for the killing. Just another one of those strange killings.''

But the slaying was certainly of importance to the Iranian government. Four Iranian police officers and Tehran's ambassador in neighboring Venezuela came to ask about the case. Even television crews from Tehran turned up in this South American nation.

''We don't know if it was normal practice,'' Greene said of Iran's interest. ''It looked to me like there was a national interest.''

But when Guyanese investigators began asking Iranian officials about Ibrahimi, Greene said, Tehran never responded. ''Believe you me, we never got anything.''

Representatives at the Iranian Embassy in Venezuela, contacted by The Miami Herald, declined to comment on the case or provide background information on Ibrahimi. His wife, Shabnaz, who was eight months' pregnant with their first child at the time of the abduction, returned to Iran after the killing.

Little is known about Ibrahimi, 35, other than he was a Shiite Muslim cleric who established permanent residence in Guyana in 2000 under a work permit requested by a man in Guyana, identified by Greene as Zenjibari Ali.

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Pertinent Links:

1) Murdered Muslim cleric had links to JFK plot suspect