Terrorists trained in Poconos, FBI alleges Rented house in Gouldsboro development

WAYNE PARRY
Associated Press Writer
May 09, 2007

Map where they lived and trained.


FORT DIX, N.J. — Six foreign-born Muslims trained in the Poconos to carry out an attack on Fort Dix and slaughter scores of U.S. soldiers, according to authorities who announced the arrests and charges Tuesday.

The FBI says the scheme was foiled when the men asked a store clerk to copy a video of them firing assault weapons and screaming about jihad.

The defendants, all men in their 20s from the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East, include a pizza deliveryman suspected of using his job to scout out the military base.

Their goal was "to kill as many American soldiers as possible" with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and guns, prosecutors said.


"Today we dodged a bullet. In fact, when you look at the type of weapons that this group was trying to purchase, we may have dodged a lot of bullets," said FBI agent J.P. Weis.

"We had a group that was forming a platoon to take on an army. They identified their target, they did their reconnaissance. They had maps. And they were in the process of buying weapons. Luckily, we were able to stop that."

Authorities said there was no direct evidence connecting the men to any international terror organizations such as al-Qaida. But several of them said they were ready to kill and die "in the name of Allah," according to court papers.

Investigators said they infiltrated the group with two informants well over a year ago and bided their time while they secretly recorded the defendants, four of whom lived in Cherry Hill, a Philadelphia suburb about 20 miles from Fort Dix.

Weis saluted the unidentified New Jersey store clerk who noticed the suspicious video as the "unsung hero" of the case. "That's why we're here today — because of the courage and heroism of that individual," the FBI agent said.

In addition to plotting the attack on Fort Dix, the defendants spoke of assaulting a Navy installation in Philadelphia during the annual Army-Navy football game and conducted surveillance at other military installations in the region, prosecutors said.

The men trained by playing paintball in the woods in New Jersey and taking target practice at a firing range near Gouldsboro, where they had rented a house at Big Bass Lake, a gated community, authorities said.

One defendant, Eljvir Duka, was recorded as saying: "In the end, when it comes to defending your religion, when someone ... attacks your religion, your way of life, then you go jihad."

The six were arrested Monday night trying to buy AK-47 assault weapons, M-16s and other weapons from an FBI informant, authorities said.

They appeared in federal court Tuesday in Camden and were ordered held without bail for a hearing Friday. Five were charged with conspiracy to kill U.S. military personnel; the sixth was charged with aiding and abetting illegal immigrants in obtaining weapons.

Four of the men were born in the former Yugoslavia, one was born in Jordan and one came from Turkey, authorities said. All had lived in the United States for years. Three were in the United States illegally; two had green cards allowing them to stay in this country permanently; and the sixth is a U.S. citizen.

One defendant, Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, spoke of using rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons to kill at least 100 soldiers, according to court documents.

"My intent is to hit a heavy concentration of soldiers," he was quoted as saying. "You hit four, five or six Humvees and light the whole place (up) and retreat completely without any losses."

"It doesn't matter to me whether I get locked up, arrested or get taken away," another defendant, Serdar Tatar, was alleged to have said. "Or I die, it doesn't matter. I'm doing it in the name of Allah."

They often watched terror training videos, clips featuring Osama bin Laden, a tape containing the last will and testament of some of the Sept. 11 hijackers, and tapes of armed attacks on U.S. military personnel, erupting in laughter when one plotter noted that a Marine's arm was blown off in an ambush, authorities said.

Asked if those arrested had any links to al-Qaida, White House spokesman Tony Snow said it appears "there is no direct evidence of a foreign terrorist tie."

The FBI's Weis said the U.S. is seeing a "brand-new form of terrorism," involving smaller, more loosely defined groups that may not be connected to al-Qaida but are inspired by its ideology.

"These homegrown terrorists can prove to be as dangerous as any known group, if not more so. They operate under the radar," Weis said.

In court documents, prosecutors said the suspects came to the attention of authorities in January 2006 when a Mount Laurel, N.J., shopkeeper alerted the FBI to a "disturbing" video he had been asked to copy onto a DVD.

The video showed 10 young men "shooting assault weapons at a firing range ... while calling for jihad and shouting in Arabic 'Allah Akbar' (God is great)," the complaint said. The 10 included six of those arrested, authorities said.

Within months, the FBI had managed to infiltrate the group with two informants, according to court documents.

One of the suspects, Tatar, worked at his father's pizzeria and made deliveries to the base, using the opportunity to scout out Fort Dix for an attack, authorities said. "Clearly, one of the guys had an intimate knowledge of the base from having been there delivering pizzas," Christie said.

The men also allegedly conducted surveillance at other area military installations, including Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, and a Philadelphia Coast Guard station.

Besides Shnewer, Tatar and Duka, the other three men were identified in court papers as Dritan Duka, Shain Duka and Agron Abdullahu.

Fort Dix is used to train soldiers, particularly reservists. It also housed refugees from Kosovo in 1999.

The arrests renewed worries among New Jersey's Muslim community. Hundreds of Muslim men from New Jersey were rounded up and detained in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, but none were connected to that plot.

"If these people did something, then they deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law," said Sohail Mohammed, a lawyer who represented scores of detainees after the 2001 attacks. "But when the government says 'Islamic militants,' it sends a message to the public that Islam and militancy are synonymous."

"Don't equate actions with religion," he said.

THE SUSPECTS
NAME: Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer

AGE: 22; Born in Jordan, April 28, 1985.

HOME: Cherry Hill, N.J.

OCCUPATION: Drives a cab in Philadelphia.

IMMIGRATION STATUS: U.S. citizen.

NAME: Dritan Duka

AGE: 28; Born in the former Yugoslavia, Nov. 2, 1978. Ethnic Albanian.

HOME: Cherry Hill, N.J.

IMMIGRATION STATUS: In U.S. illegally.

OCCUPATION: Operates Colonial Roofing and National Roofing, which lists business address at the home of his brothers, Eljvir and Shain Duka.

NAME: Shain Duka

AGE: 26; Born in the former Yugoslavia, Jan. 21, 1981. Ethnic Albanian.

LIVES: Cherry Hill, N.J.

IMMIGRATION STATUS: In U.S. illegally.

OCCUPATION: Operates roofing businesses with his brothers.

NAME: Eljvir Duka

ALIASES: Elvis Duka, Sulayman.

AGE: 23; Born in the former Yugoslavia, Aug. 28, 1983. Ethnic Albanian.

LIVES: Cherry Hill, N.J.

IMMIGRATION STATUS: In U.S. illegally.

OCCUPATION: Operates roofing businesses with his brothers.

NAME: Serdar Tatar

AGE: 23; Born in Turkey, July 19, 1983.

HOME: Philadelphia.

IMMIGRATION STATUS: Legal U.S. resident.

OCCUPATION: Works at a 7-Eleven store in Philadelphia. Had delivered pizza for a restaurant next to Fort Dix.

NAME: Agron Abdullahu

AGE: 24; Born in the former Yugoslavia, Sept. 23, 1982. Ethnic Albanian.

LIVES: Buena Vista Township, N.J.

IMMIGRATION STATUS: Legal U.S. resident.

OCCUPATION: Works at a ShopRite supermarket.

Source: FBI, U.S. Attorney's Office for New Jersey — By The Associated Press

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. (AP) — One of the men accused of plotting to attack soldiers at Fort Dix had recently applied to be a police officer in two big cities — a move some authorities believe may have been an effort to infiltrate law enforcement agencies.

Serdar Tatar, 23, applied for a job in Philadelphia last month, police spokesman Sgt. D.F. Pace said Wednesday.

"Based on what we know now, I don't think his intentions were good," Pace said.

Tatar also applied for a job in the Oakland, Calif., Police Department, according to a law enforcement official speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

Roland Holmgren, an Oakland police spokesman, said he could not immediately confirm whether Tatar had applied there.

Tatar's lawyer, Richard Sparaco, would not comment on the job applications Wednesday, and neither would U.S. Attorney Chris Christie.

Authorities have said the suspects in the Fort Dix plot went to Gouldsboro to train for an attack and stayed in a rented house in the Big Bass Lake development. Sparaco said Wednesday that his client did not make that trip.

Philadelphia police rejected Tatar, a Turkish citizen and legal U.S. resident, because he was not a U.S. citizen and had not lived in the city long enough to be eligible, Pace said. Tatar had lived there for about eight months when he applied, less than the city's one-year requirement.

He applied at a police job fair on April 10.

It isn't known when or where Tatar applied to join the Oakland police force or why he would try to join an organization thousands of miles away.

Tatar may have also wanted to join the Army, according to conversations recorded in March by an FBI informant during the investigation. A second suspect in the case told the informant that Tatar wanted to join the Army so he could kill soldiers from the "inside," according to a court filing.

"He had only one mind," a third suspect, Dritan Duka, told the informant, according to the court documents. "How to kill American soldiers."

Army spokesman Lenny Gatto said Wednesday that he did not know whether Tatar had applied to join the Army, which does not require U.S. citizenship.

Tatar, an out-of-work clerk whose last job was at a Philadelphia convenience store, and five others were arrested May 7 and charged with planning an attack on Fort Dix, which is 25 miles east of Philadelphia and is primarily used to train reservists.

Tatar was a key player in the plan, authorities said, because he knew his way around the base from his time delivering pizzas there for the shop his father owns nearby.

Tatar is charged, along with Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer and the brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka, of conspiring to kill military personnel. They could be sentenced to life in prison if convicted. A sixth man, Agron Abdullahu, is charged with providing weapons to illegal aliens, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in federal prison.

All six men are being held without bail.

Originally Posted by INSANE CANES LLC

Serdar Tatar, 23, applied for a job in Philadelphia last month, police spokesman Sgt. D.F. Pace said Wednesday.

"Based on what we know now, I don't think his intentions were good," Pace said.

The man has a talent for understatement.

Raises a question though: If they caught this guy before he could get hired on any PD, how many have they NOT caught? How many will they not catch before its too late?

Luckily, they were just plain stupid.

Originally Posted by WebSlave

Luckily, they were just plain stupid.

Don't count on 'em staying that way though.

GOULDSBORO — A local marksman remembers crossing paths with men matching the description of the suspects in a planned terrorist attack on Fort Dix in New Jersey.

On a weekend last fall, Randy Swiden of Pocono Lakes was practicing shooting his rifle at the Gouldsboro Shooting Range when he noticed three to five Eastern European men as they took turns taking target practice with three AK-47s.

The semi-automatic weapons are legal in Pennsylvania and are fairly common sights at the range, which is on state game land 127.


Their language drew his interest, he recalled while at the range on Tuesday. The men were speaking in what Swiden thought was Russian, and sometimes in broken English. Authorities describe the suspects as being from the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East.

Swiden, 59, admitted there is no way of knowing if the men he remembers being at the range are the same ones who authorities say trained in the Poconos with the goal of opening fire on soldiers at the army base.

The men rented a home in nearby Big Bass Lake Estates and "conducted firearms training" at the Gouldsboro shooting range in January 2006, according to the FBI.

"You are in the mountains in the Poconos," Mohamad Shnewer, a suspect, told an informant in August 2006. "We went there for a week walking in the mountains and shooting in the open shooting range."

That same month, the men surveyed Fort Dix and Fort Monmouth in New Jersey and Dover Air Force base in Delaware.

Swiden said the men stuck out in subtler ways on that day last fall. Rather than firing three rounds, as is allowed at the range, the men shot 20 instead, he remembered.

They had been aiming at 50-yard targets, packs of paper plates and one-gallon milk jugs, but were missing them. Swiden called them "bad shots."

The men also did not pick up after themselves, at first. Swiden and others who were at the range Tuesday said that, after a round of fire, shooters customarily walk onto the range together to pick up the targets they placed there.

Swiden, a retired truck driver who served in the 101st Airborne during the Vietnam War, said that other marksmen told the men to pick up after themselves, which they eventually did.

It was suspicious activity at the shooting range that led a state game commission officer to tip authorities.

"(The men arrested Monday) allegedly used our rifle range in the Gouldsboro area to train in some tactics," said Tim Conway of the game commission. "We did recognize a few things awhile back and reported that to the appropriate authorities."

The public rifle range along the Lehigh River is remote but has good access off Interstate 380. Shooters can take target practice from 10 stations, which consist of dilapidated benches and tables. On Thursday, the range was unmanned by state game personnel.

"It's a heavily used range," said Conway.