US foils alleged plot to attack US military base - update
Washington - Federal police broke up an alleged plot by suspected terrorists to attack military facilities in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware after monitoring the group for 17 months, federal officials said Tuesday. The group, which included ten people, intended to "attack and kill at least 100 soldiers" at Fort Dix Army base or another facility using rocket-propelled grenades or other weapons, according to documents filed Monday by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in federal court.
The FBI arrested at least five suspects, including Dritan Duka, Mohammad Ibrahim Shnewer, Eljvir Duka (also known as Elvis Duka), Shain Duka and Serdar Tatar, according to official documents.
A sixth possible co-conspirator, Agron Abdullahu - who allegedly helped procure weapons because he had a gun license - is also mentioned in the court filing. The suspects appeared to be foreign, but it was not clear from where or if they were in the country legally.
The plot began to unravel in January 2006, when FBI agents received a tip from a retail store that it had duplicated a suspicious video into a DVD that showed "10 young men ... in their early twenties shooting assault weapons at a firing range."
They were "calling for jihad and shouting in Arabic, 'Allah Akbar' (God is great)," the charges stated.
Using two paid informants, the FBI kept track of the group through audio recordings allegedly made with the consent of the suspects - and at one point, one of the informers came under suspicion of being just that.
The 26-page document describes the group's debate about targets, including Fort Dix Army base, Lakehurst Naval Air Station, the Dover (Delaware) Air Force Base, the Army-Navy football game in Philadelphia and military ships docked in the Philadelphia harbour.
One man suggests they join the US Army so they can attack from the inside.
The men practised using hand guns and rifles at a shooting range in the forests near Gouldsboro, Pennsylvania, obtained semi-automatic assault weapons and tried to obtain Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades.
The arrests were made within a month after Dritan Duka and Shnewer ordered AK-47s through one of the informants. The men talked about using personal savings to buy the weapons, according to the document.
The suspects obtained a map of Fort Dix which they hid in the car belonging to the mother of one of the suspects, and carried out surveillance of the base using their cell phones to take pictures so as not to draw attention to themselves.
"What is nice with the phone is that if you are stopped by a police, you will delete it from memory," the document quotes Shnewer as saying, in a "consensually recorded meeting" in August 2006.
At times, the men watched videos of the killing of US soldiers that made them laugh, or jihadist material posted on websites.
Tatar, who expressed concern about the welfare of his family, also said he was willing to die in the attack.
"It doesn't matter to me, whether I get locked up, arrested, or get taken away. It doesn't matter. Or I die ... I'm doing it in the name of Allah," Tatar was quoted as saying.
Their self-admitted weakness is their families who remain impervious,
and they should be eaten by, buried with, or grafted into, pigs.