New York’s Guyanese population is reeling from reports that a Guyanese-born American citizen, Russell Defreitas, and three other men, including a former member of the Parliament of Guyana, were charged in connection with a terrorist plot at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

“I think there will be shock and horror on the part of the Guyanese community,” the Ambassador of Guyana to America, Bayney Karran, said. He added that he thought there would be a lot of revulsion “because we are not a people who have any kind of tolerance for terrorism.”

The editor in chief of HardBeat-News, a daily newswire covering Caribbean émigrés that is based in the Jackson Heights section of Queens, Felicia Persaud, said Guyanese in New York are shocked that “someone within our own community would be involved in this,” Ms. Persaud also said Guyanese in New York fear the foiled plot will lead to a backlash against Caribbean Americans.

Ms. Persaud said the newswire has not yet interviewed anyone who knew Mr. Defreitas. But she said the former member of Parliament charged in the plot, Abdul Kadir, is well known in Guyana and New York.

“He is much more high profile,” she said. “People are also very shocked that someone of this stature would be involved in something like this.”

Clarence Hernandez, who was born in Guyana and lives in Richmond Hill, in an area known as “Little Guyana,” said crimes such as these are “totally wrong.” A regular worshipper at the Masjid Al-Abidin mosque in Richmond Hill, who is in his 30s and declined to give his name, said Islam strongly condemns terrorist acts like the ones the men were charged with.

A man near the taxi area at Liberty Avenue and Lefferts Boulevard, who declined to give his name, said there was much sadness in the community over hearing this news. An 18-year-old man named Narin said that if the charges are true, then those arrested were “stupid” for wanting to harm others.

The president of the New York-based Caribbean Guyana Institute for Democracy, Rickford Burke, is calling for closer monitoring of radical Islamists in the Caribbean and is asking America to provide Caribbean nations with greater security assistance.

“This terrorist plot has reminded us about the vulnerability of the Caribbean security apparatus,” Mr. Burke said. “As we tighten our noose on terrorism, we need to focus on areas that are vulnerable.”

The Caribbean is safe for tourists to visit, he said.

Rep. Yvette Clarke of Brooklyn is planning to hold a press conference today at her district office to praise the New York Police Department for its work and to assuage fears among Caribbean American residents that these arrests will lead to racial profiling or a search for suspected terrorists within the city’s Caribbean American population.

“We don’t want people to live in fear,” a spokeswoman for Ms. Clarke, Chic Smith, said yesterday. ” We want people to be aware that we’re sensitive to the issue.”

According to the Web site of the Department of City Planning, the foreign-born population of New York City in 2000 was at an all-time high of 2.87 million people, and was 36% of the city’s overall population of 8.1 million. Guyana was the fourth largest country of origin with 130,647, and Trinidad and Tobago ranked as the eighth-largest source of foreign-born, representing 88,794 residents. Ahead of these was the Dominican Republic, which was the largest country of origin of foreign-born residents, numbering 369,186, or 13% of the total, followed by China (261,551) and Jamaica (178,922). Mexico (122,550) ranked fifth, followed by Ecuador and Haiti.