Legal News

Jury Finds Fort Dix Five Guilty of Plotting to Kill U.S. Soldiers

By Dan Slater

Judge Robert Kugler listens to closing arguments by attorney Michael Huff, right, in U.S. District Court in Camden, N.J., Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2008, in the case of five charged with conspiracy to kill military personnel at Fort Dix. (AP/Shirley Shepard)

The government has suffered some setbacks in terrorism prosecutions, but yesterday brought some success.

A federal jury in Camden, N.J., found five men guilty of plotting to kill U.S. soldiers at the New Jersey-based Fort Dix military base. The men — three ethnic Albanian brothers from the former Yugoslavia; a Turkish-born convenience-store clerk; and a Jordanian-born cab driver — could face life in prison on the convictions, though shorter terms are likely. Sentencing is scheduled for April. Here are reports from the WSJ and NYT.

At trial, prosecutors said the men planned to attack Fort Dix and military personnel there, and had taken concrete steps to train and arm themselves. Prosecution evidence included hundreds of secretly taped conversations between the defendants and F.B.I. informants; jihadist propaganda videos recovered from one suspect’s computer; and videotapes of an illegal purchase of several machine guns. Defense lawyers reportedly argued that they weren’t serious about attacking Fort Dix, and that the government informants repeatedly coaxed them into making the incendiary comments recorded on government wiretaps.

Bush administration officials, writes the WSJ, have cited the Fort Dix case as an example of the fruits of aggressive counter-terrorism strategies. The government has won several other high-profile major cases, including one against Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, and another against the so-called Lackawanna Six, Yemeni-Americans convicted of being part of an Islamist terror cell near Buffalo, N.Y.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 23, 2008 (boomark / email).