Carib militants admit knowing 'JFK plotters'

More 'air quotes' this time from the NY Post. 'Alleged schemer' prayed at mosque 2 weeks earlier. Group's leader was a college chum of Guyanese lawmaker linked to plot.

But - it's all an INTERNATIONAL CONSPIRACY against the Jamaat al-Muslimeen.

Leaders of the violent Trinidadian extremist group Jamaat al-Muslimeen backtracked yesterday - admitting they did know three of the four accused JFK
terror plotters.

While still steadfastly denying any involvement with the plot to bomb fuel tanks and pipelines feeding Kennedy Airport, Kala Akii-Bua, a senior member of the group, said one of the alleged schemers, Abdel Nur, prayed at their mosque two weeks ago.

"I remember him coming and praying some Friday here," he said.

Federal authorities say that the plotters sought cash and explosives from Jamaat and that Nur personally knew its leaders.

Nur turned himself in to police Tuesday in Trinidad.

"This is an international conspiracy against the Jamaat al-Muslimeen," Akii-Bua said. "We are no strangers to conflict, but what people must understand is that the world has moved on. People have moved on . . . We have built schools and we have turned a different page."

Akii-Bua said that he had known another alleged plotter, Kareem Ibrahim, of Trinidad, for more than 20 years.

He added that the group's founder, Imam Yasin Abu Bakr, briefly knew Abdul Kadir, the former Guyanese lawmaker charged in connection with the plot, when they both attended the University of the West Indies.

The spokesman for Jamaat, which is modeled on the Nation of Islam, made his remarks at the group's compound in the Port-of-Spain suburb of Mucurapo.