An Oct. Trial for Ft. Dix Six

Jun 15, 03:34 AM

Current Headlines: By Troy Graham, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Jun. 15--The six men charged with plotting a paramilitary attack on Fort Dix pleaded not guilty at their arraignments in federal court in Camden yesterday.

Following those hearings, U.S. District Court Judge Robert B. Kugler held a conference with the defense attorneys and said he wanted to start the trial in early October.

"These defendants are being detained. . . . If the government can't prove its case, they shouldn't be in jail," Kugler said. "I'm going to push you. I'm going to be merciless."

The six defendants did not speak during either proceeding, other than to answer "yes" when asked if they understood their rights.

Several defendants, shackled at the waist and wearing olive prison jumpsuits, motioned and smiled to family members in the packed courtroom, and some mouthed words to them. One defendant, Serdar Tatar, mouthed, "I love you," to a group in the back row, including two sobbing women.

Kugler admonished both the defendants and their families, who communicated in turn.

"That will be the last time that happens in this courtroom," he said.

Five of the six were charged with planning to kill U.S. military personnel, an offense that carries a potential life sentence. The sixth defendant was charged with a weapons offense that carries a maximum 10-year term.

All six have been held without bail since being arrested on May 7.

The case includes more than 100 secretly recorded conversations made by two cooperating witnesses who managed to infiltrate the group. The FBI informants allegedly took part in a training session in February that included firearms practice and watching radical Islamic videotapes.

Kugler asked prosecutors if wiretaps or classified information were a part of the case, but the prosecutors said they weren't prepared to answer yet.

The indictment charges that five of the defendants -- Mohamad Shnewer, 22; Tatar, 23; and brothers Dritan Duka, 28; Shain Duka, 26; and Eljvir Duka, 23 -- "were inspired by . . . al-Qaeda, a foreign terrorist organization."

The Duka brothers are Cherry Hill residents who came to this country from the former Yugoslavia as children in the 1980s. They are ethnic Albanians, and authorities say they are illegal immigrants.

Shnewer, also of Cherry Hill, is a U.S. citizen who was born in Jordan and came to this country as a child. Tatar, who lived in Cherry Hill and then Philadelphia, is a legal resident alien who was born in Turkey.

The sixth defendant, Agron Abdullahu, 24, of Buena Vista Township, Atlantic County, came to the United States with his family from Kosovo in the late 1990s as part of a U.S.-sponsored airlift of victims of a genocidal war there.

Kugler compared the case against them to an undercover drug sting, anticipating similar kinds of evidence from informants and tape-recorded conversations. The attorneys agreed that the case could be tried in three to four weeks.

But Kugler also acknowledged that "this is an unusual case in many respects," including the intense media interest. The arrests of the "Fort Dix Six" garnered headlines around the world.

He said an unusually large jury pool would have to be selected because of the publicity. "Maybe a thousand," Kugler said.

Also, the nature of the allegations, which include the loaded rhetoric of terrorism and al-Qaeda, creates security concerns for the court. The other federal judges sitting in Camden cleared their calendars yesterday, and extra layers of screening were added to the courthouse.

Kugler promised security would remain tight for the trial.

He also promised several unusual steps to accommodate the media interest, many of them modeled on the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the "20th hijacker" convicted of conspiracy in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Kugler said a special Web site would be created where all court orders, filings and other information would be posted. He also said he wanted all evidence in the trial to be digital, so it could be made available to the media instantaneously as it is introduced. The courtrooms, he said, have wireless connections that will be made available to the media.

Simultaneous transcripts of the trial also would be available for a fee, Kugler said, and the court would consider a live feed to Fort Dix.

The indictment alleges the defendants considered several military installations before settling on Fort Dix as their target. Authorities alleged the defendants conducted surveillance of the base and obtained a map of the facility from Tatar's father's pizza shop next to the base.

The six were arrested on the night Shain and Dritan Duka were to buy seven assault rifles and four handguns from a "black market" gun merchant. The gun deal was, in fact, a sting operation set up by the FBI through one of its cooperating witnesses.

Contact staff writer Troy Graham at 856-779-3893 or tgraham@phillynews.com.

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