Metro

Man who helped thwart JFK terror plot gets 4 years

A Guyanese man who helped the FBI thwart a terror plot targeting New York’s JFK Airport was sentenced today to serve four years in prison.

Donald Nero, 51, was an early participant in the plan to blow up aviation fuel pipelines at the busy international airport, but later switched sides and became a FBI informant.

Nero told Judge Dora Irizzary in Brooklyn federal court that he realized he had made a colossal mistake by initially joining the plotters.

After that realization, Nero said he had decided that the only “moral and ethical course of action” he could take was to leave Guyana voluntarily and come to the United States to assist with the FBI probe into the planned attack.

He joined the Justice Department’s witness protection program and temporarily cut off ties with his family in order to join “the fight against forces of terror in this world,” Nero said.

Citing his substantial efforts to aid investigators, Brooklyn federal prosecutors recommended that he receive a sentence that took into account his assistance.

The judge, who described Nero as “an articulate man,” praised his efforts in helping law enforcement agencies thwart the planned attack, which helped avoid “mass destruction, mass tragedy, massive economic loss, and a loss of innocent lives.”

“The damage would have been greater than that caused on 9-11,” Irizarry said of the aborted attack, which could have ignited fuel pipelines traveling under residential neighborhoods near JFK Airport.

Several Muslim extremists – mostly from Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago – have already been convicted in the attack plot after they were charged with crimes including conspiracy to attack international airport facilities and aircraft, as well as plotting to destroy buildings.

Nero has served most of the sentence already while assisting investigators, and will soon begin a different life with a new identity in the witness protection program, officials said.

mmaddux@nypost.com