Preparation
The six men traveled to the Poconos mountains, where they allegedly practiced firing "semi-automatic weapons" at a shooting range in Gouldsboro, Pennsylvania. The shooting range, at Pennsylvania State Game Land 127, is operated by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. A group of ten men had recorded video footage of themselves shooting weapons and shouting Allahu Akbar ("God is greater").
On January 31, 2006, the men took the video to the Circuit City in Mount Laurel, New Jersey to convert it to a DVD. After viewing it, two employees of the store, Brian Morgenstern and another not to be named at this time, alerted authorities, who initiated a full-scale investigation.
An informant from the FBI infiltrated the group to gather information. The group's planning was caught on video and audio tape by federal authorities. They also trained in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. US Attorney Chris Christie (later elected governor) said that one of the suspects was able to draw a detailed map of Fort Dix from memory.
The men continued to work at their jobs. The Duka brothers, Eljvir, Dritan, and Shain (Albanians), operated a roofing business known as Qadr. Inc., Colonial Roofing and National Roofing. Agron Abdullahu (Albanian), Serdar Tatar (a Turkish legal immigrant), and Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer (a U.S. citizen from Jordan) held a variety of jobs, including as a taxi driver and clerk for 7-Eleven.
According to news reports, five of the men arrested intended to attack the Fort Dix military base and kill as many servicemen as they could. The sixth man arrested, Abdullahu, has been charged with aiding and abetting in the possession of firearms by the Duka brothers. In a conversation that was recorded by the informant, the group revealed to the FBI informant that the five men intended to "hit a heavy concentration of soldiers You hit four, five or six Humvees and light the whole place and retreat completely without any losses".
The men tried unsuccessfully to purchase weapons from an FBI informant, including AK-47s, M16s, M60s, rocket propelled grenades, rockets, semi-automatic Sig Sauer 9 mm handguns, Smith & Wesson 9 mm, C-4 plastic explosive, and nitroglycerin. The informant told them that the weapons would come from an underground military dealer from Baltimore, Maryland, who had recently returned from Egypt.
One of the men in the Fort Dix plot was recorded on a now widely broadcast surveillance tape commenting on a lecture by Anwar al-Awlaki, a prominent Muslim cleric of American and Yemeni citizenship, who went into hiding in Yemen after becoming radicalized in prison there during 2006-2007. (He was targeted for killing by President Obama in 2010, because of his numerous alleged terrorist activities, and assassinated in September 2011 by an unmanned US drone in Yemen.) On that tape, Shain Duka exclaimed “You gotta hear this lecture ... it's the truth, no holds barred, straight how it is!”
Read more about this topic: 2007 Fort Dix Attack Plot
Famous quotes containing the word preparation:
“Living each day as a preparation for the next is an exciting way to live. Looking forward to something is much more fun than looking back at something—and much more constructive. If we can prepare ourselves so that we never have to think, “Oh, if I had only known, if I had only been ready,” our lives can really be the great adventure we so passionately want them to be.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)
“It’s sad but true that if you focus your attention on housework and meal preparation and diapers, raising children does start to look like drudgery pretty quickly. On the other hand, if you see yourself as nothing less than your child’s nurturer, role model, teacher, spiritual guide, and mentor, your days take on a very different cast.”
—Joyce Maynard (20th century)
“With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man’s past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavours and the tinglings of a merited shame.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)