The men — Mohamad Shnewer, Serdar Tatar, and Cherry Hill brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka — were arrested in May 2007. In 2008, a federal jury in Camden convicted them of conspiring to kill U.S. military personnel at Fort Dix. All but Tatar are serving life terms

A final effort by five Muslim men to appeal their convictions for plotting a deadly strike at Fort Dix has been rejected.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied to hear the case, ending the lengthy appeal process.

The men — Mohamad Shnewer, Serdar Tatar, and Cherry Hill brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka — were arrested in May 2007. In 2008, a federal jury in Camden convicted them of conspiring to kill U.S. military personnel at Fort Dix. All but Tatar are serving life terms.

A sixth man, Agron Abdullahu from Atlantic County, was also arrested. Officials said Abdullahu was not involved in the plot, but held weapons for the men. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison in 2008.

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It all began with dropping off a video at a branch of Circuit City. A group of Muslim friends living in and around the suburban New Jersey town of Cherry Hill had just come back from a trip to the nearby Poconos Mountains in Pennsylvania.

They had gone skiing, played paintball, ridden horses and fired guns at a public shooting range, all of which they had filmed. The group included the four Duka brothers, Dritan, Shain, Eljvir and Burim, children of Albanian illegal immigrants, but who had grown up in America. The Duka men, devout Muslims with bushy beards, wanted to make copies of the film on DVDs to give others on the trip.

Unknown to them, the young Circuit City clerk they dealt with in January 2006 was disturbed by the part of their holiday video showing the Dukas firing weapons, especially when he heard cries of “Allahu Akbar” and “Jihad”. He went to the police.

That single action triggered a massive FBI surveillance operation that lasted more than a year and saw two FBI informants sent to befriend the men on the tape. It ended with dramatic arrests and claims of a terrorist plot to attack the nearby Fort Dix army base.

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This is not the way Mahmoud Omar thought things would play out.

Omar, the Egyptian-born FBI informant who was the key prosecution witness in the Fort Dix terrorism trial, is sitting at the kitchen table in his two-bedroom apartment trying to make sense of what has happened to him.

He has an eviction notice for overdue rent, an application for welfare, a foundering export business, and an uncertain immigration status.

The South Jersey apartment is sparsely furnished. There is little food in the refrigerator.

Omar is living week to week, sometimes day to day, with his American-born wife, Jessica, who grew up in Maple Shade, and their two children, a daughter, 6, and a son, 3.

“How can this be?” he asks, his eyes flashing anger, dismay, and disappointment. “It was a good case. I help. Now I have what?”

His heavily accented voice trails off. “Nothing.”

Chain-smoking cigarettes, Omar, 41, was talking publicly for the first time about his experience as an informant enlisted by the FBI as its point man in the Fort Dix investigation, and about the impact the case and its aftermath have had on his life.

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“Now you see why we were going to sacrifice all for the sake of allah in jihad,” says the neatly handwritten note on prison-issue paper. “We weren’t able to finish.”

Those seemingly incriminating words are part of a letter the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Jersey says one of the defendants in the “Fort Dix Six” homegrown terror case wrote to a fellow inmate at the Federal Detention Center (FDC) in Philadelphia. It was allegedly written by Eljvir Duka, who is charged with conspiring to attack the Fort Dix military base with automatic weapons. He and four other young Muslim men who grew up in the South Jersey area have all pleaded not guilty, and the trial is set for March. The jihad letter appears, at first glance, to be a damning piece of evidence against Duka.

But a TIME investigation of the Fort Dix Six shows that little in this case is as it first appears. While carefully assembled by authorities, who collected hundreds of hours of video and audio evidence, the case is built almost entirely on the work of a paid informant with a criminal record. More and more terrorism cases are being constructed this way, and the problematic role of informants doesn’t stop after the arrests are made, as this latest plot twist reveals.

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Please sign the Fort Dix Five’s Petition here and pass it on: http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?sdemt

In January 2006, a store clerk in South Jersey gave the FBI a videotape of some young men riding horseback, having pillow fights, shooting guns at a firing range, and saying “Allahu Akbar,” meaning God is great. Eljvir, Dritan and Shain Duka, Mohammed Shnewer, and Serdar Tatar are shown in the videotape, which had been shot during their family vacation in the Pocono Mountains,. The FBI decided that the group was suspicious and sent in two agents provocateur – Muslim men who had been convicted of serious crimes and were willing to cooperate with the government in exchange for money and leniency – to entrap the young men in criminal activity. The agents, Mahmoud Omar and Besnik Bakali, showered attention on the young men. They used money and manipulation to build up their interest in jihad. They watched jihadist videos with the young men, taunted the men on their lack of resolve to take action, and followed them around with hidden video cameras and devices to record every word spoken in passion or anger. In August, 2006,one of the informants drove Mohamed Shnewer to Fort Dix. Shnewer,who believed Omar was his friend, did not believe he was serious when the agent suggested an attack on Fort Dix

Serdar Tatar, suspicious of the agent, gave the informant a map of the base in response to the agents’ demands. He filmed the exchange and reported it to the FBI, who refused to accept it.

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Please sign the Fort Dix Five’s Petition here and pass it on: http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?sdemt

What I watched happening to my brothers in the United States’ federal court system between May 8,2007 until the final two days of their rigged sentencing on April 28 and 29, 2009, has shocked me beyond belief.  Because the media was manipulated, I know that people have no idea of what is happening. All five are clearly innocent of any kind of conspiracy, let alone a conspiracy to attack a military base, and their innocence is sitting right there in the government’s own evidence. The definition used in this case for a conspiracy conviction is two or more defendants agreeing to attack someone or something. That never happened. The U.S. prosecutors tried over and over to show that these men were talking to each other and hatching some kind of plan but it just never happened.

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Source : Helptheprisoners.org

Background

The Fort-Dix five are five muslim American men who were accused and convicted of terrorism offences involving a US Military installation. The men are Shain, Eljivir and Dritan Duka, all brothers of Albanian descent, Mohammed Shnewer who is of Jordianian descent, and Serdar Tartar of Turkish descent. All five are five more victims of a modern-day witch-hunt against muslims in the United States as part of the so-called “War on Terror”.

The case against them was started when an individual who worked at a Video shop reported them based upon what he perceived to be illegal activity. This “illegal activity” was nothing more than a camping trip, however this individuals own prejudices, disturbed by the site of practising muslim men, reported this video to the FBI. The FBI, rather than accepting that muslims have the same rights to bear arms, camp and hunt as any white American, instead chose to engage in a conspiracy to entrap these individuals in a case costing millions of dollars.

The FBI recruited two career criminals, one an Egyptian by the name of Mahmoud Omar who had been convicted of Bank fraud, the other an Albanian by the name of Besnik Bakalli, a person wanted for murder in his home country and incarcerated at the time of his recruitment by the government. The arrangements were complete immunity from prosecution from any crimes they may have committed, $1500 a week plus all expenses such as rent paid, and permission to bring their families into the United States. High incentives indeed for those without morals.

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