JJ: This is a SFP (Somali-free post)!
We first told you about this case in 2007, and you likely saw it in the news. The plotters were originally six and the case became popularly known as the Fort Dix Six terror plot. Our original interest centered around the fact that one of the six had actually been a refugee brought to America with his family from Bill Clinton’s Bosnian war and housed at the New Jersey military base he was later accused of plotting to attack.
However, in 2007, he admitted guilt and was sentenced to only five years, here. The other five went on to trial, were convicted, most got a life sentence, but are now trying to appeal their case.
PHILADELPHIA—Wiretaps obtained under a Patriot Act provision aimed at gathering foreign intelligence wrongly helped convict Muslim immigrants in a domestic criminal case, defense lawyers argued Monday in U.S. appeals court in Philadelphia.
The lawyers represent five young men convicted of plotting a deadly strike at a New Jersey military base. Prosecutors call evidence in the three-month trial overwhelming and the two wiretaps in question incidental to the conviction.
Defense lawyer Michael E. Riley argued otherwise.
“We don’t know which of the nails in the coffin were the final nails in the coffin (for jurors),” he said.
A federal jury in Camden, N.J., convicted the men—Mohamad Shnewer, Serdar Tatar, and brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka—in December 2008 of conspiring to kill U.S. military personnel at Fort Dix. All but Tatar are serving life terms.
Prosecutors charged that the Philadelphia-area residents, inspired by al-Qaida, had taken training trips to the Pocono Mountains and scouted out Fort Dix, an Army base in New Jersey used primarily to train reservists for duty in Iraq, and other sites.
Just your immigrant next door, working in jobs Americans won’t do and doing a little target practice in the Poconos for fun and recreation.
Four of the defendants had attended public high school in Cherry Hill, N.J. The men include Shnewer, a Jordanian-born cab driver; Tatar, a Turkish-born convenience store clerk; and the Dukas, ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia, who had a roofing business.
There is more, read it all.