Group is ‘new form’ of terror
CHERRY HILL, N.J. – A group of would-be terrorists, allegedly undone after attempting to have jihad training videos copied onto a DVD, has been charged with conspiring to attack Fort Dix and kill soldiers there with assault rifles and grenades, authorities said Tuesday.
Authorities said the group has no apparent connection to al-Qaida or other international terrorist organizations aside from ideology, but appears to be an example of the kind of self-directed sympathizers widely predicted – and feared – by counterterrorism specialists.
“Today we are dealing with a brand-new form of terrorism, smaller more loosely defined types of cells that may or may not be affiliated with al Qaida,” said J.P. Weis, chief agent in the Philadelphia FBI office.
“These homegrown terrorists can prove to be as dangerous as any known group, if not more so. … They strike when they feel things are ripe.”
At the same time, a 26-page indictment unsealed Tuesday indicates that the group had no rigorous military training and did not appear close to being able to pull off an attack.
“This is some guys who wanted to get a bunch of guns and shoot up some people. When – or if – they were going to shoot, we don’t know,” said an FBI official in Washington, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation.
Five men – all foreign-born and described as “radical Islamists” by federal authorities – allegedly trained at a shooting range in Pennsylania’s Pocono Mountains to kill “as many soldiers as possible” at the historic Army base 25 miles east of Philadelphia. A sixth man was charged with helping them obtain illegal weapons.
FBI and Justice Department officials said the arrests were the result of a 16-month operation to infiltrate and monitor the group. It was portrayed as a leaderless, homegrown cell of immigrants from Jordan, Turkey and the former Yugoslavia who came together because of a shared infatuation with Internet images of jihad, or holy war.
The defendants allegedly passed around and copied images of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and the martyrdom videos of two of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists.
“Unlike other cases we’ve done, there was no clear ringleader,” U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie said in an interview. “They all seemed to feed off each other. They were clearly guys turning to this element for inspiration. They wanted to be jihadists.”
The arrests in the case began Monday night after two defendants arrived at a local home to buy assault weapons, which had been supplied and disabled by the FBI, officials said.
Much of the evidence in the case was obtained with the help of two paid informants, including one described as an Egyptian military veteran who befriended one suspect about a year ago and surreptitiously taped many of their conversations. The defendants were also tripped up by information obtained from computers and cell phones, according to records and officials.
The FBI first got wind of the alleged plot in January 2006, after an unidentified store clerk alerted police to a video that showed the men firing assault weapons, calling for jihad and yelling “God is great” in Arabic, officials said. The men had submitted the video file to the store so that it could be copied onto a DVD, authorities said.
According to the indictments, the video came from firearms training in the Poconos. The group also allegedly trained with paintball guns and scouted several military facilities for an attack, including Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, the U.S. Coast Guard Building in Philadelphia and other targets.
Authorities said the group settled on Fort Dix in part because one defendant, Serdar Tatar, 23, had delivered pizzas to the base from his family’s nearby restaurant, Super Mario Pizza, and knew the area “like the palm of his hand,” according to a defendant. Tatar, who was born in Turkey and is a legal U.S. resident, also obtained a map of the base, according to the charges.
Another defendant, Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, 22, a Jordanian native employed as a taxi driver in Philadelphia, was quoted in the indictment as saying that “you can hit an American base very easily.”
Shnewer also allegedly said: “When you got a military base, you need mortars and RPGs.”
Three defendants are ethnic Albanian brothers from the former Yugoslavia who operated a roofing business in Cherry Hill and lived in the United States illegally: Eljvir Duka, 23, Dritan Duka, 28, and Shain Duka, 26. A sixth defendant, Agron Abdullahu, 24, also an ethnic Albanian born in the former Yugoslavia, is charged with helping the Dukas illegally obtain firearms.
The Duka brothers lived with their parents in a beige two-story house on Mimosa Drive, a winding suburban street. The brothers also did car repairs from the house, neighbors said.
Neighbors said the family had lived on the block for about seven years and had always seemed different from other suburbanites. There were 10 to 20 people living there – two parents, five children, five grandchildren, daughters-in-law and others. The family raised sheep, goats and roosters in the backyard.
The case underscores the complexities of America’s post-Sept. 11 domestic counterterrorism efforts, in which the FBI, Homeland Security Department and local police must decide whether to wait until suspected terrorists get close to acting to prove their case or move in earlier in an effort to stop them.
One law enforcement source close to the investigation said it was “hard to say” whether the group would have followed through on an attack, but authorities had to err on the side of caution in making the arrests.
“Obviously, these guys had some radical beliefs and the stuff they downloaded from the Web was very serious,” said the source, who requested anonymity so he could discuss an ongoing case. “But it’s not like they were going to be able to get rocket-propelled grenades and blow things up.”
Other experts cautioned that the threat from such groups shouldn’t be exaggerated.
The Fort Dix ring, said Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of the CIA’s counterterrorism center, appeared to be highly inept – handing over training videos to a video-store clerk, and then infiltrated by not one but two informants within a couple of months.
“It’s pretty clear this is not a trained clandestine cell,” he said. “These guys look like they probably couldn’t rob a bank.”
The Duka brothers are charged with conspiracy to murder members of the armed forces and face possible life sentences. Abdullahu is charged with aiding and abetting illegal weapons possession and faces 10 ten years in prison. All six were held without bond after a court appearance Tuesday.