The jailed head of a multi-million dollar cigarette smuggling ring and one of his top lieutenants plotted from behind bars at Rikers Island to kill witnesses they believed were cooperating with law enforcement officials, authorities said.
But when ringleader Basel Ramadan placed a phone call to hire a contract killer he was really talking to an undercover NYPD detective.
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly announced the new indictment of Ramadan and Yousseff Odeh on Thursday.
They were among 16 Palestinian men charged in May with running a massive smuggling ring that flooded New York City and the Albany regions with millions of cartons of unstamped cigarettes. Officials said the ring had direct ties to Mideast terrorists and some of their profits may have been funneled to Hamas and Hezbollah.
In August investigators learned through confidential sources that Odeh – who was one of Ramadan’s top distributors and had strong financial ties to the “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel-Rahman – was conspiring with Ramadan to kill people in New York City who they believed were cooperating with authorities in the smuggling case.
Ramadan made phone calls to further the murder plot, officials said Thursday.
According to the new indictment, unsealed in Brooklyn Supreme Court, in one of the calls, on August 24, Ramadan provided the name and home address of one of the intended targets and a description and place of business of the other.
On September 17 he told the detective, posing as a killer, that he had “one of those problems.” When the “killer” said he could “take care of it” Ramadan expressed his appreciation and added that the killer may “need some help,” the indictment said.
“These two individuals cheated New York taxpayers out of millions of dollars in tax revenue and then tried to cover up their dangerous and lucrative smuggling operations, which hurt New York businesses, by committing the ultimate crime,” Schneiderman said.