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  1. #1
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    Informant: Fort Dix Suspects Trained For Jihad

    Dec 1, 2008 1:39 pm US/Eastern
    Informant: Fort Dix Suspects Trained For Jihad
    CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) ― An FBI informant testifying against five men accused of planning to kill soldiers at New Jersey's Fort Dix told jurors Monday that a trip to the Pocono Mountains the men took together was meant as training for a holy war.

    Besnik Bakalli, a 31-year-old illegal immigrant from Albania, told jurors Monday that he hoped the trip in February 2007 with some of the defendants and other men would merely be a relaxing vacation.

    Deputy U.S. Attorney William Fitzpatrick asked him what the trip turned out to be.

    "Training," Bakalli said, "for jihad."

    He said the men spent the first night looking for guns to buy, then went to shooting ranges and played paintball during their week in the Pennsylvania mountains.

    Those activities were meant to get ready for a holy war, he said.

    Bakalli is the second of two government informants to testify at the trial.

    The five accused men, all in their 20s at the time of their May 2007 arrests, are foreign-born Muslims who lived for years in the comfortable Philadelphia suburb of Cherry Hill.

    They're charged with conspiracy to kill military personnel, attempted murder and weapons offenses. If convicted, the men could face life in prison. Though no attack was carried out, prosecutors say the plot is one of the most frightening examples of homegrown terrorism.

    Defense lawyers deny the men were seriously planning anything.

    On Monday, Bakalli said the men talked constantly about Islam, war between the Muslim world and America, and guns. He said they talked about their respect for Osama bin Laden, and their belief that it was just for spies against the Iraqi insurgency to be beheaded.

    Defense lawyers are expected to attack Bakalli's credibility during cross-examination; he's in the United States illegally and was once convicted of a shooting in his native Albania, although he was later pardoned.

    Another FBI informant, Mahmomud Omar, spent 13 days on the witness stand earlier in the trial.e shot a man, then entered the United States again.


    Despite his troubled past, he's on the side of the U.S. Justice Department as it tries to prosecute five men accused of planning to sneak onto New Jersey's Fort Dix and kill soldiers at the base.

    Bakalli, a paid informant in the case, is scheduled to begin testifying on Monday in what could be several days on the stand in the men's trial, which began in October and could stretch into 2009.

    In opening arguments, a defense lawyer, Rocco Cipparone, told jurors about Bakalli and another paid informant: "There are blemishes so deep, the best cosmetologist in the world can't cover them up," he said.

    The government, though, has portrayed the case as an example of a good investigation averting an attack that could have been one of the nation's most frightening examples of homegrown terrorism.

    The suspects -- all foreign-born Muslims who spent years in the comfortable Philadelphia suburb of Cherry Hill and were under 30 when they were arrested in May 2007 -- face life in prison if convicted of the most serious charges they face, including conspiracy to murder military personnel and attempted murder.

    Four of the men also face weapons charges.

    Defense lawyers say their clients were not seriously planning an attack, but that the other informant, Mahmoud Omar, tried to make it seem they were so he could continue to be paid by the government.

    Prosecutors acknowledge that Bakalli and Omar are flawed.

    However, Deputy U.S. Attorney William Fitzpatrick told jurors in his opening statements that the FBI needed people like them -- who would have credibility with the alleged plotters.

    Fitzpatrick called Bakalli a "tough guy from the streets" who was about to be deported when he agreed to help the government.

    "His main goal is not cash," Fitzpatrick told jurors. "His main goal is status."

    The government has promised to recommend Bakalli get some kind of legal resident status in exchange for his help. The FBI also brought his mother and sister from Albania for safety last year, Fitzpatrick said.

    How much Bakalli has been paid, though, has not been made public.

    Cipparone told jurors a bit about Bakalli back in October, saying the informant entered the United States in 1999 using a phony passport. He then went back to Albania in 2000 to deal with a family matter.

    "His sister had some kind of dispute, (and) he decided he was going to take care of it," Cipparone said. He said Bakalli shot the man who allegedly was giving his sister a problem, but the man was not killed.

    Bakalli later returned to the U.S. and was convicted of the shooting in absentia. But in early 2007 -- when Bakalli was working for the U.S. government -- he was pardoned for the shooting.


    It's likely jurors will hear much more about the shooting and its aftermath.

    When Omar testified for 13 days, defense lawyers were not shy about digging into his history of bank fraud.

    Government lawyers, though, hardly asked Omar anything.

    For the first four days of his testimony, he sat at the witness stand as prosecutors played dozens of recordings he made while wearing a body wire. His job was mostly to clarify points on the recordings.

    Defense lawyers questioned him in cross-examination for parts of nine days, trying to portray him as a savvy scam artist who managed to go from being pursued by the FBI to being paid $1,500 a week by the agency. They also questioned his role in the case.

    There are some areas defense lawyers might not be allowed to probe regarding Bakalli.

    Prosecutors have asked a judge to rule off limits questions about his 2005 arrest on charges of making terroristic threats, because the charges were dropped before he started working on the Fort Dix case, and a restraining order an ex-girlfriend got against him in 2006 -- citing "aggressive conduct" -- because he never contacted her again and the order was dropped. They also don't want questions about why one of his sisters, already in the United States, was gr
    While the Egyptian-born Omar focused on Mohamad Shnewer, Albanian-born Bakalli got to know ethnic-Albanian brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka, who were born in the former Yugoslavia.

    Omar said he did not know Bakalli was also an informant until a few months ago, when they were both at an FBI office preparing for the trial.
    anted asylum last year.


    But the two crossed paths during the 14-month investigation.

    In one recording played for jurors, Bakalli asked Omar how stolen cars are shipped overseas.

    Omar, who exported cars to Egypt, then explained how it happens. Bakalli then announced he was going to try shipping stolen cars overseas himself and laughed.

    http://wcbstv.com/topstories/fort.dix.t ... 77196.html
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    The government has promised to recommend Bakalli get some kind of legal resident status in exchange for his help. The FBI also brought his mother and sister from Albania for safety last year, Fitzpatrick said.
    This is absolutely disgusting! Bakalli sounds like a lifelong criminal; exactly the kind of person we're suppose to be keeping out of this country! I can understand a reduced sentence for testifying. However, he doesn't deserve a 'get out of jail free' card. He should do time in prison and then be deported. Oh, and furthermore, I'm sure his mother and sister were part of the plea bargain. Man, this really boils my butt.

    I don't know about the rest of you but I'm get sick of the plea deals offered to criminals in this country. IMO, the deals are oftentimes excessive and unnecessary.

    "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" ** Edmund Burke**

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    Posted on Tue, Dec. 2, 2008

    Fort Dix informant says he was scared

    By Troy Graham
    Inquirer Staff Writer

    In 2006, Besnik Bakalli was jailed on an immigration charge and facing deportation when the FBI asked him to help with an investigation.
    At the behest of the agents, Bakalli befriended Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka, who, like him, spoke Albanian as their first language.

    Bakalli said yesterday that the FBI agents did not tell him why they were interested in the Dukas.

    But Bakalli said he started to piece it together during a fishing trip he took with the Dukas and their friend Mohamad Shnewer.

    While riding in a minivan, Shnewer showed Bakalli videos on his laptop that depicted attacks on U.S. soldiers and vehicles. The Dukas were "laughing . . . having a good time," Bakalli said.

    "I was scared," he said. "I never saw these videos before, and I thought, who are these people? Why am I here?"

    Eventually, Bakalli learned that the Dukas, Shnewer, and other foreign-born Muslim men were under investigation for plotting an attack on Fort Dix, inspired by radical Islamic dogma.

    Bakalli, 31, from Albania, became one of two paid FBI informants to infiltrate the group. The other informant, Mahmoud Omar, befriended Shnewer, a fellow Arabic speaker.

    Omar, an Egyptian illegal immigrant with a federal bank-fraud conviction on his record, spent 13 days testifying in the case now unfolding in federal court in Camden.

    Defense attorneys vigorously attacked Omar's credibility, and they likely will do the same with Bakalli, who has had several minor run-ins with the law in the United States.

    More serious, the defense says, is that Bakalli returned to Albania in 2000 and shot a man who had been feuding with his sister.

    Bakalli, also an illegal immigrant, said he agreed to help the FBI because "I was hoping I would stay here." Prosecutors have acknowledged that Bakalli and his family will receive consideration in their immigration cases.

    "I can have a better life here," Bakalli said yesterday.

    He said the FBI told him to make contact with the Dukas at a Dunkin' Donuts shop on Route 130 in Cinnaminson, where the brothers liked to gather.

    Bakalli said he went there and waited. When he spotted the Dukas, he began talking on his phone in Albanian. The Dukas, who are ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia, heard their native language and invited Bakalli to have coffee with them, he said.

    At the end of that first meeting, they invited Bakalli to attend a mosque with them on Fridays.

    In August 2006, Bakalli began wearing a wire.

    He said all that the Dukas ever talked about was "Islam, jihad, war, guns." Prosecutors played several hours of those conversations for jurors yesterday.

    On the tapes, the men repeatedly discussed what they perceived as the oppression of Muslims around the globe - in Bosnia, Chechnya, Kashmir, the Palestinian territories and other locations. They talked about their own duties as Muslims to wage jihad and help their "brothers."

    "The war with Islam has already started," Dritan Duka said on one of the tapes.

    The men also talked extensively about where they could buy weapons and how much they cost. Dritan Duka said he had a source for guns in Camden but the source could not talk to him on the phone for fear of being overheard.

    "We don't want to get caught with guns," he said. "Especially that we have beards. They think we are terrorists."

    But not once on the tapes played yesterday do any of the men discuss Fort Dix or plans to attack the base. Defense attorneys have said their clients are guilty of nothing more than tough talk, and they blame Omar for goading them along.

    Prosecutors said the five defendants were planning to use a pizza-delivery pass to get on the base and open fire. Dritan and Shain Duka were arrested while trying to buy seven rifles from Omar, the informant.

    The Dukas, Shnewer and Serdar Tatar have been jailed since their coordinated arrests in May 2007. They face life in prison if convicted of plotting to kill U.S. soldiers.

    Bakalli also accompanied the men on a vacation they took to the Poconos in February 2007, heavily armed with weapons and ammunition. While they were in the mountains, they visited a shooting range and played paintball and talked about jihad.

    "I thought this was not a normal vacation," Bakalli said. "It was training."

    Before the trip, Bakalli said, he lied and told the men he had fought for three months with the Kosovo Liberation Army, an Albanian guerilla group that battled Serbian security forces in the late 1990s. Bakalli said he was trying to ingratiate himself with the men.

    He also lied about one other aspect of his life to gain the Dukas' trust.

    "How much do you know about the Islamic faith?" asked Deputy U.S. Attorney Bill Fitzpatrick.

    "Nothing," Bakalli answered.

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

    http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homep ... cared.html
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