Fort Dix informant says he was scared

In 2006, Besnik Bakalli was jailed on an immigration charge and facing deportation when the FBI asked him to help with an investigation.

At the behest of the agents, Bakalli befriended Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka, who, like him, spoke Albanian as their first language.

Bakalli said yesterday that the FBI agents did not tell him why they were interested in the Dukas.

But Bakalli said he started to piece it together during a fishing trip he took with the Dukas and their friend Mohamad Shnewer.

While riding in a minivan, Shnewer showed Bakalli videos on his laptop that depicted attacks on U.S. soldiers and vehicles. The Dukas were "laughing . . . having a good time," Bakalli said.

"I was scared," he said. "I never saw these videos before, and I thought, who are these people? Why am I here?"

Eventually, Bakalli learned that the Dukas, Shnewer, and other foreign-born Muslim men were under investigation for plotting an attack on Fort Dix, inspired by radical Islamic dogma.

Bakalli, 31, from Albania, became one of two paid FBI informants to infiltrate the group. The other informant, Mahmoud Omar, befriended Shnewer, a fellow Arabic speaker.

Omar, an Egyptian illegal immigrant with a federal bank-fraud conviction on his record, spent 13 days testifying in the case now unfolding in federal court in Camden.

Defense attorneys vigorously attacked Omar's credibility, and they likely will do the same with Bakalli, who has had several minor run-ins with the law in the United States.

More serious, the defense says, is that Bakalli returned to Albania in 2000 and shot a man who had been feuding with his sister.

Bakalli, also an illegal immigrant, said he agreed to help the FBI because "I was hoping I would stay here." Prosecutors have acknowledged that Bakalli and his family will receive consideration in their immigration cases.

"I can have a better life here," Bakalli said yesterday.

He said the FBI told him to make contact with the Dukas at a Dunkin' Donuts shop on Route 130 in Cinnaminson, where the brothers liked to gather.

Bakalli said he went there and waited. When he spotted the Dukas, he began talking on his phone in Albanian. The Dukas, who are ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia, heard their native language and invited Bakalli to have coffee with them, he said.

At the end of that first meeting, they invited Bakalli to attend a mosque with them on Fridays.

In August 2006, Bakalli began wearing a wire.

He said all that the Dukas ever talked about was "Islam, jihad, war, guns." Prosecutors played several hours of those conversations for jurors yesterday.

On the tapes, the men repeatedly discussed what they perceived as the oppression of Muslims around the globe - in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, the Palestinian territories and other locations. They talked about their own duties as Muslims to wage jihad and help their "brothers."

"The war with Islam has already started," Dritan Duka said on one of the tapes.

The men also talked extensively about where they could buy weapons and how much they cost. Dritan Duka said he had a source for guns in Camden but the source could not talk to him on the phone for fear of being overheard.

"We don't want to get caught with guns," he said. "Especially that we have beards. They think we are terrorists."

But not once on the tapes played yesterday do any of the men discuss Fort Dix or plans to attack the base. Defense attorneys have said their clients are guilty of nothing more than tough talk, and they blame Omar for goading them along.

Prosecutors said the five defendants were planning to use a pizza-delivery pass to get on the base and open fire. Dritan and Shain Duka were arrested while trying to buy seven rifles from Omar, the informant.

The Dukas, Shnewer and Serdar Tatar have been jailed since their coordinated arrests in May 2007. They face life in prison if convicted of plotting to kill U.S. soldiers.

Bakalli also accompanied the men on a vacation they took to the Poconos in February 2007, heavily armed with weapons and ammunition. While they were in the mountains, they visited a shooting range and played paintball and talked about jihad.

"I thought this was not a normal vacation," Bakalli said. "It was training."

Before the trip, Bakalli said, he lied and told the men he had fought for three months with the Kosovo Liberation Army, an Albanian guerilla group that battled Serbian security forces in the late 1990s. Bakalli said he was trying to ingratiate himself with the men.

He also lied about one other aspect of his life to gain the Dukas' trust.

"How much do you know about the Islamic faith?" asked Deputy U.S. Attorney Bill Fitzpatrick.

"Nothing," Bakalli answered.