Hearing Set In Airport Plot Case

A hearing was scheduled today for three men held in Trinidad who have been ordered to be extradited to the United States to face terrorism charges related to what prosecutors said was a planned attack on Kennedy Airport.

The men, Kareem Ibrahim, Abdul Kadir and Abdel Nur, were charged in the summer by the United States attorney in Brooklyn of conspiring with a former airport cargo worker to attack jet fuel storage tanks and fuel lines at Kennedy. On Aug. 6, officials in Trinidad approved their extradition.

Lawyers for the three men have appealed that ruling and will challenge the extradition order in San Fernando, Trinidad. Their lawyers were expected to argue the extradition would be a breach of the men’s rights.

A Boss's Accuser Is Arrested

This is why you cannot believe all sexual harassment complaints:

A former personal assistant who sued an investment firm chief for sexual harassment has been arrested on charges of using the executive’s credit card to charge tens of thousands of dollars in personal expenses. The assistant, Fatima Monahan, 36, of North Arlington, N.J., is charged with grand larceny.

She was accused of stealing more than $43,000 from Frederick Iseman, founder and managing partner of Caxton-Iseman Capital, a private equity investment firm. Ms. Monahan’s lawyer, Charles Ross, said “when the evidence is heard, it’ll be absolutely clear she did nothing wrong.”

Mr. Iseman said yesterday that Ms. Monahan’s claims were “baseless and dishonest, and were fabricated to distract attention from her own outrageous behavior.” Ms. Monahan pleaded not guilty at her arraignment yesterday in State Supreme Court.

She needs to be prosecuted for the phony sexual harassment charges. It is bad enough when someone is actually guilty of sexual harassment to get away with it, however, it is worse when an innocent person is accused of such a despicable act.

Star Witness In 1990 Murder Case Vanishes

This much is known about Thomas Morales. He is known as Spanky on the street, and also goes by the name Jimmy Rodriguez. He is about 5-foot-8 and in his 40s, thin, wears an earring in his left ear and a mustache.

Thomas Morales was due to testify in court last week.

When he was 11 or 12, he met a younger boy named Joey Pillot, and they grew up to become members of a homicidal drug and extortion gang called C & C, which operated in the South Bronx.

This week, Mr. Morales is wanted as a witness in one of the more notorious and vexing trials of the last 20 years in New York, the murder of a bouncer at the Palladium nightclub on Nov. 23, 1990.

To call him the star witness might be underselling his role. The defense was hoping that he would steal the show by taking the witness stand and revealing that he and his childhood friend, Mr. Pillot, and not the defendant, David Lemus, were the gunmen in the shooting that led to the death of the bouncer, Marcus Peterson, all those years ago.

But, to the astonishment and consternation of all, Mr. Morales has vanished.

He was in court as recently as late October for pretrial hearings. Then last week he stopped answering his mail, and a telephone he used was disconnected just days after opening arguments in the Palladium trial.

Media Executives arrested in Phoenix

Two executives from Village Voice Media — a company that owns a number of alternative weeklies including The Village Voice, The LA Weekly and The Phoenix Times — were arrested Thursday night in Phoenix on charges that a story published earlier in the day in The Phoenix New Times revealed grand jury secrets.

Michael Lacey, the executive editor, and Jim Larkin, chief executive, were arrested at their homes after they wrote a story that revealed that the Village Voice Media company, its executives, its reporters and even the names of the readers of its website had been subpoenaed by a special prosecutor. The special prosecutor had been appointed to look into allegations that the newspaper had violated the law in publishing the home address of Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s home address on its website more than three years ago.