Trinidad has a huge terror target of its own

Houston Chronicle:

The war on terror has come to this Caribbean island nation, irritating many residents, worrying others and picking at the scars of old social feuds.

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"I don't think there is any widespread Islamic extremist movement in Trinidad," said Anthony Bryan, a native of the islands and an expert on the Caribbean at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "Certainly the talk of this being a hotbed of Islamic radicalism is nonsense at this point."

Other analysts say the region's potential for sheltering terrorists coupled with Trinidad and Tobago's strategic importance — it supplies nearly 80 percent of the liquefied natural gas, or LNG, imported into the United States — should ring some bells.

"This was a small plot compared to what they might be planning," said Candyce Kelshall, a Trinidad native who consults on energy security issues in London. "There is something bigger on the back of this.

"I think there will be an attack on an LNG facility in the region," Kelshall said. "There is an extraordinarily tangible threat to the United States."

The U.S. indictment charges that the four arrested men, all Muslim converts in their 50s and 60s, were making plans to blow up pipelines supplying jet fuel to the airport.

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Fueled by poverty and the drug trade, criminal violence has exploded in recent years, making Trinidad and Tobago one of the most dangerous countries in the hemisphere. The island's per capita murder rate is four times that of the U.S.

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The NY Times reports on the Trinidad Islamist group:

One senior member of this island’s most hard-line Islamic group said he loves American television and hopes to send his son off to university in the States. Another said that when he is not praying or preaching, he plays in a steel drum band.

Denying that their group, Jamaat al Muslimeen, was tied to any plot to bomb a New York City airport, members this week portrayed themselves as both Islamists and islanders, devoted to God but also part of the multicultural mix that defines the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago.

Even as they did, the fiery imam who has long been the Jamaat’s public face ducked out the back of the mosque. That man, Yasin Abu Bakr, who once led a violent coup attempt here in 1990, faces trial next week for sedition and extortion and oversees a group with a reputation for thuggishness.

Those who have studied the group consider it a stretch to mention Jamaat al Muslimeen and Al Qaeda in the same breath. But United States authorities say it was an obvious place for the four suspects now accused of plotting to bomb Kennedy International Airport to turn when they were looking for Islamist support.

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This is typical of NY Times reporting on the war on terror. Skeptical in the extreme of groups that may be affiliated with the enemy. Don't worry though, they will be eager to attack the Bush administration for not connecting the dots after the next attack.