Sources: Brothers Charged in Alleged Fort Dix Terror Plot May Have Been Smuggled Into U.S.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

AP

Brothers Eljvir Duka, left, and Shain Duka are seen in an artist's drawing during a court appearance at the U.S. District Courthouse in Camden, N.J.

FORT DIX, N.J. — The three brothers being charged as part of the alleged Fort Dix terror plot may have been smuggled across the border, FOX News has learned.

Dritan "Anthony" or "Tony" Duka, 28; Shain Duka, 26; and Eljvir "Elvis" Duka, 23, were in the United States illegally. Federal investigators were exploring whether they were smuggled into the country or entered as stowaways.

Because the three men entered the United States without inspection, there is no legal record of their entry.

The six being charged in the alleged plot — Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, 22; Serdar Tatar, 23; Agron Abdullahu, 24; and the Duka brothers — were ordered held without bail for a hearing Friday.

Five were charged with conspiracy to kill U.S. military personnel; the sixth, Abdullahu, was charged with aiding and abetting illegal immigrants in obtaining weapons.

Four of the arrested men were born in the former Yugoslavia, one was born in Jordan and one came from Turkey, authorities said. 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.

Federal investigators are now checking whether the latter three lied on their immigration paperwork to remain in the United States.

One drove a cab, three were roofers. Another worked at a 7-Eleven and a sixth at a supermarket. Their alleged plot to attack Fort Dix was foiled by another blue-collar worker: a video store clerk.

Six foreign-born Muslims were accused Tuesday of planning to assault the Army base and slaughter scores of U.S. soldiers with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.

The unidentified clerk is being credited with tipping off authorities in January 2006 after one of the suspects asked him to transfer a video to DVD that showed 10 men shooting weapons at a firing range and calling for jihad, prosecutors said.

"If we didn't get that tip," said U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, "I couldn't be sure what would happen." FBI agent J.P. Weis called the clerk the "unsung hero" of the case.

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

• Click here to read the complaint (FindLaw pdf)

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 Qaeda 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.

One of the suspects, Tatar, worked at his father's pizzeria — Super Mario's Restaurant — in Cookstown 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.

Tatar's father, Muslim Tatar, 54, said the accusations against his son were hard to accept.

"He is not a terrorist. I am not a terrorist," he told The Star-Ledger of Newark.

The elder Tatar told ABCNews he had gotten no indication his son harbored a deep hatred of the United States.

"I came here from Turkey in 1992, and this is my country. I love this country," Muslim Tatar told ABC.

The group often watched terror training videos, clips featuring Usama 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, authorities said.

The men trained by playing paintball in the woods in New Jersey and taking target practice at a firing range in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, where they had rented a house, authorities said.

"We believe they are their own cell," said Christie. "They are inspired by international terror organizations. I believe they saw themselves as part of that."

Fort Dix last was in the international spotlight in 1999, when it sheltered more than 4,000 ethnic Albanian refugees during the NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

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.

After the video clerk's tip, investigators said they infiltrated the group with two informants and bided their time while they secretly recorded the defendants.

The six were arrested Monday night trying to buy AK-47 assault weapons, M-16s and other weapons from an FBI informant, authorities said. It was not clear when the alleged attack was to take place.

"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," said Weis.

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 2001 terror 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 Sept. 11 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.

Mario Tummillo lives near Tatar's father in Cookstown and said he worked with Tatar at the pizza parlor. Tummillo, 20, described Tatar as a religious man who "wasn't violent at all."

The restaurant's chef, Joseph Hofflinger, 35, quit after learning the owner was the father of one of the suspects.

"My son is in the 82nd Airborne," Hofflinger told ABC. "I won't work for a place that supports terrorism so I'm out."

FOX News' Catherine Herridge and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Virginia Tech Murderer was the same as the murderers we face in the fight against Islamic Jihad

Cho Was a Terrorist!
Media Joan Swirsky April 23, 2007	URL: http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/swirsky/04232007.htm

What's the difference between Cho Seung-Hui and the many hundreds if not thousands of Palestinian and Islamic terrorists worldwide? It's a three-word answer: choice of weapon.

Everything else is the same.

All of them planned their mass murders meticulously by preparing carefully loaded weapons (either cars or, in Cho's case, guns) intended to produce maximum casualties.

All of them were duly deliberate, plotting their grisly massacres to result in a contagion of helplessness, fear and panic.

All of them had malice aforethought, anticipating that their acts would have the widest possible ripple effect, which they did – for the victims and their families, society-in-general, and their governments.

All of them left behind their own self-aggrandizing manifestos, photographs, videos, and tape-recorded statements, the better to provide an acid-in-the-wounds punctuation mark to their bloodthirsty deeds.

And all of them had identical rationalizations, blaming their acts on the "Big Satan" America or her ally, the "Little Satan" Israel.
What Is Not Similar?
The only difference between Cho's terrorist act and those committed by fanatics in other countries is the way the media react to terrorism.

When Palestinians or Islamic fanatics massacre innocent people in pizza parlors, at weddings, and in the marketplace – in Israel, Spain, England, Russia, the list goes on and on – their hagiographies appear in the Arab media, their mothers applaud them as "heroes," and terrorist countries like Syria and Iran renew both arms and money to like-minded murderers.

But in America, the predictable liberal media stick relentlessly to their tired themes, which they lard with code words, dissimulation and a numbingly repetitive politically correct agenda.

They never use the word terrorist, although by any objective measure, that is exactly what Cho was. Instead, they use the generic words "shooter" and "gunman," usually prefaced with the word "alleged," just in case the ironclad proof of his crimes is not enough to satisfy their faux sense of "fairness" – or the fairness the American Civil Liberties Union claims to uphold, except when it comes to American soldiers.

They report the Muslim name Cho chose for himself, Ismail Ax, and engraved in red on his arm, but they steadfastly refuse even to speculate about his identification with those who murder in the name of Islam, preferring to cite his identification with – of course – American-born killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the teenagers who murdered 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999.

According to writer Jerry Bowyer, "Islam has become the tribe of choice of those who hate American society." In a stunning article describing the history of the name Ismail (here) he says that Cho was one of the "malignant, narcissist loners who want to reject their community utterly, to throw off their 'slave name' and represent the downtrodden of the earth by shooting their friends and neighbors."

A writer identified as GatewayPundit goes further, saying that if Cho wrote "Ismail Ax on his arm, signed his suicide note Ismail Ax , sent an overnight package [to NBC] from A Ishmail, made sure he had no other ID on his person after he martyred himself, you can be damn sure he wanted to be remembered as Ismail Ax. Shaving his head and [presenting] a martyr video…must have added to law enforcement's suspicions, which is why it is so curious that they would say so early on that horrible day that "it was not tied to terrorism."

Of course, no one in our politically correct media ever raised this issue!
More Media Drivel
The liberal media also trot out the usual psychology "experts" who drone on about Cho, the "misguided youth" (do they ever call 23-year-old mass murderers malevolent, or for that matter, men?), his putatively "abusive" childhood, the "grieving" the real victims' families must go through, and, of course, that old standby, "closure," as if somehow understanding the nature of evil incarnate will ever assuage the mourners' grief or heal their broken hearts.

Yet they fail to blame psychology itself for Cho's delusional sense of entitlement, and the positively repulsive, indeed Clintonesque, habits of projection and finger pointing – you decided to spill my blood…you forced me into a corner…now you have blood on your hands…."

The media report that Cho was involuntarily hospitalized in 2005 for mental evaluation, after two female students complained he was stalking them, and that on a 2005 detention order state officials thought there was "probable cause to believe" that Cho was "mentally ill and in need of hospitalization," and that he presented "an imminent danger to self or others as a result of mental illness" and is "substantially unable to care for himself."



But they fail to tell you that it was a direct result of liberal lawmaking that Cho could not be kicked off campus, that his parents could not be informed of his devolving state, that police could not "do anything" unless he actually committed a crime, and that any other measure to purge the Virginia Tech campus of his toxic persona – save the polite suggestion of "counseling" – could not be acted on.



In fact, thanks to liberal lawmakers, between 1960 and 1980 over 400,000 chronically mentally ill patients were released to the streets, completely ill equipped to take care of themselves, earn a living, or even function adequately. According to "Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health System" by Pete Earley, after their release, the prison system was bursting at its seams, and by 2006, the U.S. Department of Justice reported that over half of prisoners suffered from mental illness.



Have you heard these facts from the media? Thought not.



Finally, the media raise the old liberal chestnut, more gun control, and feature, among other anti-gun proponents, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who knows better than most people that any crook, thug, robber, rapist or potential murderer can get a gun in five minutes, no matter how many new laws are on the books.



Still, they fail to tell you that legally obtained guns, as well as licenses to carry concealed weapons – both of which were banned at VT – might have saved many lives during Cho's rampage.


Straining at a Flea–Swallowing an Elephant
After decades of fawning over Hip Hop "artists" who routinely spew racial epithets, and cozying up and laughing out loud at Don Imus's racial slurs, all of a sudden media liberals became "outraged" and "shocked" when the shock jock made a – don't let the children read this – racial slur.

If Cho had made such a slur, you can bet that the full force of the powers-that-be at VT would have come down on him, and that his expulsion would have been upheld even in a higher (liberal) court! Meanwhile, his menacing and threatening behavior were just too much for the college to handle. How tragic!

In their never-ending quest to exalt multiculturalism, the liberal media never made the kind of connection between Cho and Islam that writer Paul Hollrah did when he reported that the day after the slaughter at Virginia Tech – which was also a day after 187 innocent men, women and children and 12 Iraqi policemen were murdered by Islamic terrorists in Baghdad – a memorial service was held on campus and attended by, among others, President Bush, who spoke movingly, and Dr. Sedki Riad, director of the Islamic Center of Blacksburg.

"Death strikes every day and we hear and read about it in the media," Riad intoned. Then, after quoting from the Koran, he said, "The Islamic faith reminds us...that to Allah we belong and to him is our return."

According to Hollrah, "From the radical Muslim point of view, Cho Seung-Hui was only doing Allah's work…Apparently it had not occurred to the university administrators, or to the convocation planners, that if Dr. Riad offered a prayer to Allah on behalf of those killed in the slaughter at Virginia Tech, millions of Muslims around the world, including many in Virginia, would be rejoicing at their deaths."

Did you read or hear about Dr. Riad's provocative statements in the media? Thought not.

This is because, for liberals – and their echo-chamber media – there is no crime too heinous, no anti-Americanism too virulent, no Islamic preacher too inflammatory, no liberal law too dangerous, no use of the word terrorist too accurate, no use of defensive weapons too logical, no psychological theory too preposterous – as long as it furthers their agenda.

And what is that agenda? That "feelings" trump facts, that no one should make "judgments," and that every person and every culture is "equal." The following brief laundry list attests to the liberal philosophy that is largely responsible for Cho's killings:

▪ Capitalism isn't better than the hunting and gathering that takes place in rain forests, or the communism or socialism that keeps people impoverished and enslaved.

▪ Laws that infringe on "civil liberties" are de facto bad, even if they incarcerate potential mass murderers like Cho in the absence of an airtight case.

▪ Parents should have no right to question a 13-year-old's choice of abortion, no access (without written "permission") to a college-student's grades, and no expectation to be informed when their child is in trouble.

▪ War is always bad, even if it's to vanquish terrorists who attacked us and continue to vow to annihilate us.

▪ A soaring stock market is the sign of corporate greed, while poverty is the sign of "victimization."

▪ American soldiers are like Nazis (thank you, Senator Durbin), but suicide bombers are "freedom fighters."

▪ Hard science propounded by "establishment" doctors, ala the link between hormone-replacement therapy and breast cancer, takes decades of peer-reviewed studies to be credible, but Junk science propounded by liberal Chicken Littles, ala global warming, is embraced unquestioningly.

▪ Islam is only and always to be mentioned as "the religion of peace"; CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) is always to kowtowed to, even when defending the flying imams, who posed palpable security threats to their fellow travelers; and rioting young Muslims in Europe are only to be described as "youth."

And Cho Seung-Hui, who attended a pricey college that his parents paid for but was jealous of classmates who drank cognac (which cost significantly less than the guns and ammo he purchased to murder them), is a victim of our "materialistic society," while his actual victims might have benefited from some "sensitivity" training.

To liberals, black is white, up is down, right is wrong, and the moon is made of green cheese! To the rest of us, Cho was a terrorist!
Joan Swirsky is a New York-based author and journalist who has been a longtime health-and-science and feature writer for The New York Times Long Island section. She is the recipient of seven Long Island Press Awards...

Opinions expressed by contributing writers are expressly their own and may or may not represent the opinions of The New Media Journal, its editorial staff or its publisher. Reprint inquiries should be directed to the author of the article. Photographs featured in The New Media Journal are for educational purposes only. While some of them are factual in nature others are creations meant to incite thought to further the socio-political and ideological conversation amongst of our readers. Contact the editor for a link request to The New Media Journal. The New Media Journal is not affiliated with any mainstream media or ideological organizations . The New Media Journal is not supported by any political organization. The New Media Journal is a group of non-compensated, independent writers bringing researched, fact-based commentary to the public in the midst of the mainstream media's blatant, agenda-driven bias. The New Media Journal is a non-profit educational effort.


The New Media Journal.us © 2007
Site Meter


--
Support Paul Williams in his battle against terror and injustice
......you may be next!

http://www.paulwilliamsdefensefund.com

God is not a man that He should lie, nor a mortal that He should change His mind. (Numbers 23:19)

And also the Eternal One of Israel will not lie nor change His mind; for he is not a man, that He should change His mind. (I Samuel 15:29)

Do not put your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no salvation! (Psalm 146:3)