Dix Six – Last Five Defendents GUILTY AS CHARGED

The remaining Dix Six terrorists have been convicted of planning to kill US Soldiers at Fort Dix, NJ. To bad they could not get the attempted murdre charge to stick… but I guess that is a technicality and at least they are convicted of planning to kill soldiers and they will stay in jail…

CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) – Five Muslim immigrants were convicted Monday of plotting to massacre U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix in a case that tested the FBI’s post-Sept. 11 strategy of infiltrating and breaking up terrorist conspiracies in their earliest stages.The men could get life in prison when they are sentenced in April.  The five, who lived in and around Philadelphia for years, were found guilty of conspiring to kill U.S. military personnel. But they were acquitted of attempted murder, after prosecutors acknowledged the men were probably months away from an attack and did not necessarily have a specific plan. Four defendants were also convicted of weapons charges. The federal jury deliberated for 38 hours over six days. The government said after the arrests in 2007 that case underscored the dangers of terrorist plots hatched on U.S. soil. Although investigators said the conspirators were inspired by Osama bin Laden, they were not accused of any ties to foreign terror groups. Defense lawyers argued that the alleged plot was all talk—that the men weren’t seriously planning anything and that they were manipulated and goaded by two paid FBI informants. Faten Shnewer, the mother of defendant Mohamad Shnewer, said the informants should be the ones in jail. “Not my son and his friends. It’s not right, it’s not justice,” she said after the verdict. The government “sent somebody to push him to say something; that’s it.” Convicted were: Shnewer, a Jordanian-born cab driver; Turkish-born convenience store clerk Serdar Tatar; and brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka, ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia, who had a roofing business. A sixth man arrested and charged only with gun offenses pleaded guilty earlier. “These criminals had the capacity and had done preparations to do serious and grievous harm to members of our military,” Ralph Marra, the acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey, said after the verdict. But some Muslim leaders in New Jersey disputed that. “I don’t think they actually mean to do anything,” said Mohamed Younes, president of the American Muslim Union. “I think they were acting stupid, like they thought the whole thing was a joke.” Jim Sues, executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said: “Many people in the Muslim community will see this as a case of entrapment. From what I saw, there was a significant role played by the government informant.” The yearlong investigation began after a clerk at a Circuit City store told the FBI that some customers had asked him to transfer onto DVD some video footage of them firing assault weapons and screaming about jihad. The FBI asked two informants—both foreign-born men who entered the U.S. illegally and had criminal records—to befriend the suspects. Both informants were paid and were offered help obtaining legal resident status. During the eight-week trial, the government relied heavily on information gathered by the informants, who secretly recorded hundreds of conversations. Prosecutors said the men bought several assault rifles supplied by the FBI and that they trekked to Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains to practice their shooting. The government also presented dozens of jihadist speeches and videos that the men supposedly used as inspiration. According to prosecutors, the group chose the Army post because one of the defendants was familiar with it. His father’s pizza shop delivered to the New Jersey base, which is 25 miles from Philadelphia and used primarily to train reservists for duty in Iraq. The group’s objective was to kill “as many American soldiers as possible,” prosecutors said. But the men’s lawyers attacked the credibility of the informants and accused them of instigating the plot. After the verdict, Schnewer’s attorney, Rocco Cipparone, said there would not have been a conspiracy without the involvement of the informants. “I believe they shaped the evidence,” he said. Prosecutor William Fitzpatrick defended the government’s handling of the case, telling the jury: “The FBI investigates crime on the front end. They don’t want to have to do it on the back end.” Members of the jury would not speak to reporters after the verdict and instead released a statement that said, in part, “This has been one of the most difficult things that we have ever had to do.” None of the defendants testified. The government said after the men’s arrest that an attack was imminent, though prosecutors backed off that assertion at the trial. The government has had a mixed record on terrorism prosecutions since Sept. 11. It won guilty pleas from Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui; Richard Reid, who tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic jetliner with a shoe bomb; and the Lackawanna Six, a terrorist cell outside Buffalo, N.Y. And it convicted Jose Padilla of plotting terrorist attacks. But a case against four men in Michigan fell apart after a federal prosecutor was accused of withholding evidence. And a case in Miami against seven men accused of plotting to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower has produced one acquittal and two mistrials.

One Of Dix Six Plotted To Attack The Other Major Targets

Mohamad Shnewer is not being charged with planning to attack the White House, Capital Building., FBI HQ and CIA HQ, however evidence that he was planning to is being considered as evidence in his case.

Sorry, but the prosecutor needs to level these as charges as well, I would venture to say that he also discussed these plans with the other 4 still awaiting trial, more investigation needs to go into this by the prosecutor and they should be charged as well.

Prosecutors are trying to get taped conversations with the informant, Mohmoud Omar, admitted into evidence, however the defence is claiming that it has nothing to do with the case and would be prejudicial against his client. Let’s see, he is already charged with planning to attack Fort Dix and attempted murder, how could recordings of him planning to attack major assets not be relevant? And any evidence against his client is obviously prejudicial as it against him. To claim that it makes it more personal to the jury, that is not relevant, as that is what a good case does, for either the defense or jury. Additionally if he was planning to attack these targets, then it is all the more reason to bring it up in his trial.

CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) — One of the five men awaiting trial on charges alleging they plotted an armed attack on soldiers training at Fort Dix discussed other targets including the White House and Capitol, prosecutors claim in court filings.

The allegations, contained in a motion filed Friday in U.S. District Court, stem from wiretapped conversations between defendant Mohamad Shnewer and Mahmoud Omar, an FBI informant.

According to prosecutors, Shnewer spoke on Aug. 11, 2006, of targeting FBI and CIA headquarters as well as the Army training base. They also said another defendant attempted to buy an AK-47 automatic weapon in 2005.

Prosecutors want the information admitted as evidence of criminal intent in the upcoming trial. Jury selection is set to begin on Sept. 29.

Attorney Rocco Cipparone, who represents Shnewer, said the wiretap evidence was not relevant to the case and could be prejudicial to his client, and he said he was considering whether to object to some or all of the prosecution’s motion.

“I don’t think it should be admitted,” Cipparone said Saturday. “It personalizes it more to jurors, so it can have an unfair prejudicial impact. Whether or not it’s admissible, it doesn’t change the theory of the defense.”

Defense attorneys are expected to attack the credibility of Omar and another FBI informant and may claim that their clients were entrapped.

The five men — Shnewer, Serdar Tatar and brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka — were arrested in May 2007 and accused of plotting to sneak onto Fort Dix to attack soldiers.

A sixth suspect, Agron Abdullahu, pleaded guilty last year to providing weapons to the group and was sentenced to 20 months in prison.

All six men are foreign-born Muslims in their 20s who have spent much of their lives in Philadelphia or its southern New Jersey suburbs. They face charges including attempted murder, conspiracy and weapons offenses and could be sentenced to life in prison of they are convicted on all counts.

Dix Six – Charged With Attempted Murder

Five of the Six have now had attempted murder and additional firearms charges levied against them… Can’t wait for the trial of these scumbags to commence…

CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) — The five men accused of plotting to sneak onto Fort Dix and kill soldiers there pleaded not guilty on Friday to the latest charges against them and received a new date for their trial.

Investigators say the men trained briefly in the Poconos, shooting at a rifle range near Tobyhanna Army Depot and renting a house at Big Bass Lake Estates.

U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler set jury selection for Sept. 29. Prosecutors said they expected the trial itself to take four to six weeks.

A lawyer for one of the suspects said he would be open to having the trial earlier if he and other defense lawyers could be ready earlier.
The men — all foreign-born Muslims in their 20s who had spent years in the Philadelphia suburbs — were arrested on May 7 and charged with conspiracy to kill military personnel in an alleged plot that was never carried out. Some of them also faced weapons charges.

This week, prosecutors added attempted murder charges against all five men and more weapons charges against four of them. All face life sentences if they are convicted of the conspiracy charge. Being convicted on all counts could add decades more.

In court Friday, the lawyers for all five entered not guilty pleas to all charges.

Preparing for the trial has been an arduous task because the government gathered a massive amount of evidence during a 15-month investigation.

On Friday, federal prosecutors said they would give defense lawyers recordings of 400 hours of some 12,000 telephone calls taken from the cell phone of suspect Eljvir Duka and two cell phones and a home phone of Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer over a period of about nine months. That comes to about 10 calls per day on each of four phones.

Deputy U.S. Attorney William Fitzpatrick said most of the calls were not relevant to the case. “They didn’t talk to each other on the phone,” he said.

“We have people ordering pizzas and scheduling doctor’s appointments?” Kugler asked.

“Yes,” Fitzpatrick said.

Still, the defense lawyers say they and their clients need to plow through all the evidence — which now runs to well over 1,000 hours of recordings — to see if they can find anything that helps their case.
Also at the hearing, the defense lawyers said they would seek to have the trial held outside the Camden area because media coverage there has been extensive and could taint the jury pool.

Dix Six Denied Bail

Federal Judge Robert Kugler rejects defense attorney’s shameful attempt to get the Dix Six released on grounds that they had been denied proper access to evidence. Previously they had complained that they were not allowed acces to the information because they were separated from the general population in jail. At one point they tried to have laptops issued to them to access information, not sure if that was granted or not, now their lawyers want them out on bail.

Interesting, the writer draws the conclusion that since Kugler did not make public the video distributed in jail by one of the defendents, that the Judge did not believe they were trying to recruit Jihadists. The decision not to make the video public was based on the content of the video and the fact that public consumption could prevent finding an impartial jury. He did not state that he did not believe they were trying to recruit other prisoners for terrorism…

Thank G”d this judge had enough common sense not to release these POS…

CAMDEN, New Jersey (Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge on Thursday denied bail to five Muslim men accused of plotting an armed attack on New Jersey’s Fort Dix army base.

Judge Robert Kugler rejected claims by lawyers for the men that they had been denied proper access to information that may be used against them at trial. The lawyers argued the men needed to be released on bail in order to get proper access.

The five men pleaded not guilty in June to charges of plotting to kill U.S. soldiers at the Fort Dix military base, located about 40 miles east of Philadelphia, and to possessing illegal weapons.

They are Yugoslav-born ethnic Albanian brothers Eljvir, Dritan and Shain Duka, all illegal immigrants who ran a roofing busineses in Cherry Hill, New Jersey; Mohamad Shnewer, a Jordanian-born taxi driver from Philadelphia; and Serdar Tatar, a Turkish-born convenience store clerk.

Prosecutors’ argued that at least one defendant had been promoting jihad, or Muslim holy war, against the West, among other inmates at a Philadelphia detention center where they are being held, but Kugler said he was not convinced.

The judge, who previously denied bail to the men shortly after their May 2007 arrest, rejected a request by prosecutors to make public a video that they say was used by Shnewer in the detention center to attract recruits to jihad.

Kugler said the “inflammatory” video includes “exhortations” by a figure that looks like Osama bin Laden, and images of dead and maimed people who “could be Muslims.”

Public access to the disc would risk prejudicing a jury whose likely members have already been exposed to extensive media coverage of the charges against the men, he said.

The trial, already postponed twice, is currently scheduled to begin on March 24.

(Reporting by Jon Hurdle; editing by Michelle Nichols and Jackie Frank)

Dix Six Recruiting Terrorist In Jail

Well, the Dix Six, who recently tried to petition a judge that they should be moved into general polulation because they were not receiving fair access to the evidence in their case, seem to have other motives for wanting to be in the general population. As I pointed out in a previous post, location has nothing to do with access to evidence, that is their lawyers job to arrange for that. Also I said that they were in a secured area for their own safety. Well on top of that they are in a secure area for the safety of the general public. These scumbags are trying to recruit more terrorists while in jail, from the jails polulation. Not that this does not happen normally with Muslims in jail, but this is a group of terrorists who were in the processes of planning an attack.

Personally I think each one should be shipped to a maximum security detention center and each one should be completely isolated. These guys are a threat to our national security.

HADDONFIELD, New Jersey —  Federal authorities say one of the men accused of planning an attack on soldiers at the Fort Dix army base gave another inmate in a federal detention center an Al Qaeda recruitment video and another wrote a note referring to the fight “we weren’t able to finish.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office made the allegations in a brief filed in U.S. District Court late Tuesday to oppose the suspects’ request to be granted bail.

A lawyer for one of the men said the government is misrepresenting an incident in the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia.

The suspects contend that the detention center staff has not allowed them adequate access to evidence in the case against them as they prepare for trial. That is why they have asked a judge to either allow them to be free on bail or come up with alternate arrangements to allow them to review materials for the trial, which is scheduled to begin March 24.

The five men — all foreign-born Muslims in their 20s — were arrested in May and charged with conspiring to kill uniformed military personnel. Authorities said they planned to sneak onto Fort Dix, a base in New Jersey used primarily to train reservists for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There was no attack, however.

A sixth man later pleaded guilty to providing weapons to some of the five charged in the alleged conspiracy.

In the legal filing, the government said Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer gave another inmate a copy of an Al Qaeda-produced DVD last month. Guards found the disc in a book in the detention center’s law library.

Government lawyers said in the filing that “the fact the defendant Shnewer and, perhaps, his co-conspirators may be spreading jihadist recruitment videos to other inmates clearly raises grave security concerns for the warden, and, again, supports the reasonableness of continued administrative detention for these defendants.”

Shnewer’s lawyer, Rocco Cipparone, said Shnewer told him 10 days or so ago about the incident. But Cipparone said Shnewer did not give the other inmate the video. Rather, he said, Shnewer was upset that the man somehow got hold of evidence that only the defendants in the case were supposed to see.

The government also said that suspect Eljvir Duka and another inmate were passing notes.

In one note, the government said, Duka wrote, “Now you see why we were going to sacrifice all for the sake of Allah in jihad” and referred to the fight “we weren’t able to finish.”

The government said detention center staff confronted Duka about the notes. According to the filing, he acknowledged he was passing them but said they only dealt with “issues such as the quality of the food” behind bars.

Duka’s lawyer, Troy Archie, did not immediately return a voice mail or e-mail message Tuesday night.

The government also said the five men have had access to the evidence when they requested it.

The five suspects include three ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia, a Jordanian and a Turk.

A hearing on the men’s bail motion is scheduled for Dec. 20.

Dix Six – How Can You Treat Your Terrorist Like This

Three of the Dix Six Terrorists, who planned to attack soldiers at Fort Dix, in NJ and trained in the Pocono’s of Pennsylvania are whining about how they are being unfairly treated while in prison. Well sorry boys, but your special housing is probably for your own good, I for one would like to see you put in General Population. As for not being allow the number of phone calls you feel you deserve and having the number of visitors you would like, well tough. You are in jail for planning terrorist attacks, if it were up to me you would only have access to your lawyers. There would be no phone calls and no visitors as both are a security risk. As for being in special housing, that has nothing to do with your access to review evidence, that is your lawyers job to get you the information to review. Speaking of your lawyer, I like how the one complains how he has never experienced having to speak English with other clients. I wonder how many of his clients were terrorists planning on killing Americans…

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. (AP) — Three of the five men charged with plotting an attack on Fort Dix have asked a judge to move them from a secluded part of a prison as they await trial.

In legal filings over the past week, the men repeat a complaint that their lawyers have made before: In the Special Housing Unit of the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia, they are not being given adequate access to the government’s evidence in their case.

A judge may consider the new requests from Dritan Duka, Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer and Serdar Tatar at a status conference scheduled for Tuesday. As of Monday, the other two men — Eljvir and Shain Duka — had not made similar requests. But they and their lawyers have complained about their treatment in custody.
The Special Housing Unit is used to house suspects whom authorities believe should not be in the general population — often for their own protection. Inmates there are rarely let out of their cells. But it is not solitary confinement; some have cellmates. All five men have been in the unit since they were arrested.

The men, all foreign-born and in their 20s, were charged in May with planning a raid on Fort Dix. They face life in prison if they’re convicted of conspiring to murder military personnel. A sixth man pleaded guilty last month to conspiring to provide weapons to the group.
Authorities have said the men scouted out East Coast military installations to find one to attack but settled on the Fort Dix base largely because one of them knew his way around from delivering pizzas to the base for his father’s restaurant. The installation, which is being used largely to train reservists bound for Iraq, was not attacked.

Investigators say the men trained in the Poconos, using a rifle range near Tobyhanna and staying briefly in a rented house at Big Bass Lake Estates.

Their lawyers argue that the men are not supposed to be placed in the high security unit for punitive reasons — so they should be placed in the general population of the detention center.
Their lawyers also argue that they want the men to hear — and in some cases, see — about 200 hours of audio and video recordings the government made while investigating the case.

But the men are getting access to the recordings only sporadically, their lawyers have said.

The men have also complained that they are not being allowed visits from their families and phone calls as often as they should.
Rocco Cipparone, the lawyer for Shnewer, said he believes low-level detention center employees have been the ones restricting the movements of the suspects.

He said that when he visits Shnewer, he must sign a form pledging to communicate with him only in English.

“I’ve never ever seen it for other clients” in custody, Cipparone said.