More Fort Dix defendants file appeals

The remaining four defendants in the Fort Dix terrorism trial filed appeals yesterday arguing there was not enough evidence to convict them.

The fifth defendant, Serdar Tatar, submitted his appeal in December, shortly after the men were convicted of conspiracy to kill U.S. soldiers.

The appeals ask the judge to acquit the men or give them a new trial. They also asked the judge to schedule oral arguments on the motions.

In the appeal for Eljvir Duka, attorney Troy Archie said "there exists a serious danger that an innocent person has been wrongfully convicted."

All five defendants - Tatar, Mohamad Shnewer and brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka - could face life in prison at their sentencings, scheduled for April.

Prosecutors said the five foreign-born Muslims were planning an attack on Fort Dix inspired partly by violent jihadist videos downloaded from the Internet.

Lawyers for the five said their clients, all raised in Cherry Hill, were alienated young men who talked tough about jihad, but had no intentions of carrying out an attack.

The jury convicted the men of conspiracy, but acquitted them of attempted murder.

In an interview last week, one of the anonymous jurors told The Inquirer that the jury had no doubt the men would have carried out an attack eventually, but their plan had not progressed far enough to convict on the attempted murder charges.

Federal authorities arrested the men in May 2007 after Dritan and Shain Duka attempted to buy seven rifles from an FBI informant.

Also last week, the judge who presided over the case received a letter from the oldest daughter of 30-year-old Dritan Duka asking for leniency.

In the typed letter, on paper bordered with rows of stars, Lejla Duka said her father and uncles never talked about Fort Dix and "didn't want to do ANYTHING there."

"So please go easy on them because I really need them in my life," she wrote.

Lejla Duka described her father as "a wonderful dad" and said "its so boring with out him and my uncles." She ended her letter with a postscript.

"I'm sorry about my father and uncle's bad language on the recording, I will have to talk with them about that," she wrote.

Recordings were made by two FBI informants who captured hundreds of hours of conversations with the defendants.

Those recordings formed the basis of the government's case, but Archie said prosecutors presented only one conversation "that could possibly be interpreted as having something to do with the charges" against his client.

He also said the jury needed to find that "there was an agreement, a meeting of minds" between his client and at least one codefendant to target U.S. soldiers.

"Yet, the jury was never presented with any conversation between Eljvir Duka and any one of his codefendants in which any such discussion occurred," Archie wrote.

The attorney for Shain Duka, Mike Riley, also said the informants did not capture any conversations with his client that "could possibly be construed as evidence of . . . an alleged conspiracy."

In fact, Riley said, Shain Duka is heard in numerous conversations saying he didn't have the courage to attack U.S. soldiers.