Jury Hears Evidence In Ft. Dix Terror Case

Informant Says Alleged Plotters Sought Sniper Training, Powerful Guns

(AP)  Jurors in the case of an alleged plot to attack the U.S. Army's Fort Dix base in New Jersey heard recordings on Tuesday in which some of the five defendants talked about buying weapons, sniper training and killing soldiers.

The suspects, who were in their 20s when they were arrested, are all foreign-born Muslims who have lived for years in the comfortable Philadelphia suburb of Cherry Hill.

One of the men, Eljvir Duka, an illegal immigrant from the former Yugoslavia, asked whether a rifle would be a powerful enough weapon.

"Can you shoot an American soldier from a mile away and kill him?" he said.

Duka's words were captured on recordings secretly made by an FBI informant in February 2007, during a trip he and the defendants made to Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains. The informant, Besnik Bakalli, testified that he hoped the trip would be a vacation but that he believed it was really training for a jihad - a holy war.

Government prosecutors used the recordings and Bakalli's testimony to support their claims that Duka, his two brothers and two other men were plotting to kill soldiers at Fort Dix. Defense lawyers, who have not yet been able to question Bakalli in cross-examination, say the men were not seriously planning anything.

The recordings played Tuesday - which are among hundreds made during a 14-month investigation - included some of the suspects going to gun stores, talking about buying guns, praising al Qaeda, talking about killing soldiers and suicide bomb attacks. But they did not include any mention of Fort Dix or specific plans to attack American targets.

No attack was carried out before the men were arrested in May 2007. Still, the government has portrayed the case as one of the most frightening examples of homegrown terrorism in the United States.

All five men could face life in prison if they are convicted. They face charges of conspiracy to kill military personnel, attempted murder and weapons offenses.

Bakalli, 31, told jurors he was caught entering the United States with a fake passport in December 1999 and sought asylum. But while he was being detained, he heard from relatives back in Albania that his sister was being threatened by a man he described as a "criminal."

---

U.S. District Court Web page with evidence from the trial.

---

Bakalli said he dropped his request to remain in the U.S. and traveled home with the intention of killing the man. He hunted him down and shot him, but the man survived. Bakalli was convicted in absentia on a gun charge.

Meanwhile, he sneaked back into the U.S., where he eventually became a construction worker. In 2006, after immigration officials caught him again, the FBI asked him to become an informant.

He said he was paid about $12,000 to $13,000 for his help - all for time he missed work to help with the investigation.

In the recordings the jury heard Tuesday, the men discussed the morality of attacks. Some of the accused plotters said that it is permissible under Islam to attack military targets, but not civilians.

During one taped conversation, one of the suspects who is also an illegal immigrant from the former Yugoslavia, Shain Duka, asks a group of men, "Where does it say in the Quran that you can't do suicide bombs?"

A few moments later, Shain Duka says the suicide bombs deployed in Iraq against U.S. military targets were permissible. "The way they do in Palestine," he said, referring to Israel, "I'm not for that."

Other suspects were an American citizen born in Jordan, illegal immigrants from the former Yugoslavia, and Serdar Tatar, a legal U.S. resident born in Turkey.

[arnoldbowers]

Where is the question not; what is the question? Why not just needle them and forget it. They were out to kill our military persons without a thought; here gwe bush the idiot, does not need to do anything else other than put them out of this world so they can get on too their 21 virgins for eternity. Frank