Fort Dix case will stay in Camden, judge rules

The Fort Dix case will stay in Camden.

A federal judge yesterday denied a defense motion to move the trial of five men accused of plotting an armed attack on Fort Dix to another venue because of publicity.

District Court Judge Robert B. Kugler also denied a raft of other defense motions seeking to suppress evidence, dismiss some counts of the indictment, and try some defendants separately.

Defense attorneys had asked for part of the indictment to be stricken that says the men were inspired by al-Qaeda and terrorist attacks on the United States. They said the language could inflame a jury.

Prosecutors said the references demonstrated what motivated the men, all foreign-born Muslims.

"It goes to prove their intent to commit the crimes charged," said Deputy U.S. Attorney William Fitzpatrick. "This gives [jurors] an accurate, realistic impression of the government theory."

Kugler yesterday called the references "explosive stuff" that was "prejudicial, but not unduly so."

Although jurors will hear testimony about al-Qaeda and Islamist doctrine during the trial, Kugler agreed not to talk about al-Qaeda when discussing the charges with the jury at the start of the trial.

The trial of Mohamad Shnewer, 23; Serdar Tatar, 24; and brothers Dritan, 29, Shain, 27, and Eljvir Duka, 24, is scheduled to begin late next month.

They face life in prison if convicted of conspiring to kill military personnel.

All five men spent most of their lives in South Jersey or the Pennsylvania suburbs. Prosecutors said they had planned to use a pizza-delivery pass to get into Fort Dix and open fire.

A sixth man, Agron Abdullahu, was sentenced in March to 20 months in prison for allowing the Dukas, illegal aliens from the former Yugoslavia, to fire his guns during trips to the Poconos.

Defense attorneys likely will attack the credibility of two government informants who secretly recorded hundreds of hours of conversations with the men - possibly arguing that the informants entrapped the defendants.

Troy Archie, one of the defense attorneys, said yesterday that one informant claims in a tape to have committed a homicide in Kosovo or Albania. Archie asked for any evidence the prosecutors have to support that claim.

The other informant, identified in court as Mahmoud Omar, is an Egyptian immigrant convicted of federal bank fraud in 2001.

Archie said the informants "are doing all the talking about this conspiracy" on the tapes.

Shnewer's attorney, Rocco Cipparone, read from a transcript of a recorded conversation in which Omar urges Shnewer to strike back at the United States.

Shnewer appears to resist, saying that they should pray because "he and only he can change destiny," referring to God.

"It's Mr. Shnewer saying, 'If

you

want to go do something, go do it,' " Cipparone said.

But Fitzpatrick said there were "countless conversations in which Mr. Shnewer is the one doing the talking . . . about putting bullets in the heads of young Americans."