Feds: Fort Dix attack was nearly ready

Federal authorities said Wednesday that six Muslim men accused of plotting to massacre U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey were on the verge of carrying out the attack when they were arrested.

"I think they were in the last stage of planning," U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie said. "They had training, they had maps, and I think they were very close to moving on this.

"Our view was they had pretty much gotten to concluding the planning phase of this and were looking to obtain heavy weaponry."

Members of the group were arrested Monday night as they tried to buy AK-47 assault weapons, M-16s and other weapons from an FBI informant, authorities said.

The men — four born in the former Yugoslavia, one from Jordan and one from Turkey — lived in Philadelphia and its suburbs with their immediate and extended families.

The six — Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, 22; Dritan "Anthony" or "Tony" Duka, 28; Shain Duka, 26; Eljvir "Elvis" Duka, 23; Serdar Tatar, 23; and Agron Abdullahu, 24 — were ordered held without bail. Three were in the United States illegally; two had green cards allowing them to stay in this country permanently; and one is a U.S. citizen.

A senior FBI counterterrorism official who requested anonymity said the men were a homegrown cell — with no ties to international terrorist groups or to any kind of criminal element in the former Yugoslavia or among ethnic Albanians here or overseas.

"We don't have any sense, and we did lots of [intelligence] collection, to show that there is anything whatsoever to do with Albania or Yugoslavia," the FBI official said, refuting rumors that surfaced on the Internet and among some terrorism experts.

One of the suspects, Abdullahu, was familiar with Fort Dix because it was the first place he landed when arriving in the United States as a refugee from Kosovo, according to a law-enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The United States allowed thousands of refugees into the United States after it intervened in the 1998-99 Kosovo war.

Another defendant, Tatar, worked at his father's pizzeria and made deliveries to Fort Dix, authorities said. Tatar's father, Muslim Tatar, 54, denied his son had made deliveries to the post, but Christie said the younger Tatar spoke of the deliveries on a tape obtained by authorities.

The investigation began more than a year ago after a clerk at a Circuit City store in Mount Laurel, N.J., was asked to transfer a videotape onto a DVD. The tape showed 10 men shooting weapons at a firing range and calling for jihad, prosecutors said. The 10 included the six men under arrest, authorities said.

The unidentified clerk was hunted by more than a dozen reporters Wednesday. The store manager, aided by police, kept the media at bay.

Circuit City corporate spokesman Jim Babb said it was routine for store employees to watch customer videos when dubbing a videotape onto a DVD.

"We do cooperate with law-enforcement authorities who are investigating possible illegal activities," he said. "You know, when you're making a dub — and I understand that this was dub — you have to look at it for quality purposes."

Compiled from The Associated Press, The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Los Angeles Times