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Dix informant: Men spoke of sniper training

CAMDEN, N.J. — Jurors in the case of an alleged plot to attack Fort Dix heard recordings Tuesday in which some of the five defendants talked about buying weapons, sniper training and killing soldiers.

One of the men, Eljvir Duka, asked whether a rifle would be a powerful enough weapon.

“Can you shoot an American soldier from a mile away and kill him?” he said.

Duka’s words were captured on recordings secretly made by an FBI informant in February 2007, during a trip he and the defendants made to Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains. The informant, Besnik Bakalli, testified that he hoped the trip would be a vacation but that he believed it was really training for jihad — holy war.

Government prosecutors used the recordings and Bakalli’s testimony to support their claims that Duka, his two brothers and two other men were plotting to kill soldiers on the Army’s Fort Dix. Defense lawyers, who have not yet been able to question Bakalli in cross-examination, say the men were not seriously planning anything.

The recordings played Tuesday — which are among hundreds made during a 14-month investigation — included some of the suspects going to gun stores, talking about buying guns, praising al-Qaida, and talk of killing soldiers and of suicide bomb attacks. But they did not include any mention of Fort Dix or specific plans to attack American targets.

No attack was carried out before the men were arrested in May 2007. Still, the government has portrayed the case as one of the most frightening examples of homegrown terrorism in the United States.

The suspects, who were in their 20s when they were arrested, are all foreign-born Muslims who have lived for years in the comfortable Philadelphia suburb of Cherry Hill.

All five men could face life in prison if they are convicted. They face charges of conspiracy to kill military personnel, attempted murder and weapons offenses.

Bakalli, 31, told jurors he was caught entering the United States with a fake passport in December 1999 and sought asylum. But while he was being detained, he heard from relatives back in Albania that his sister was being threatened by a man he described as a “criminal.”

Bakalli said he dropped his request to remain in the U.S. and traveled home with the intention of killing the man. He hunted him down and shot him, but the man survived. Bakalli was convicted in absentia on a gun charge.

Meanwhile, he sneaked back into the U.S., where he eventually became a construction worker. In 2006, after immigration officials caught him again, the FBI asked him to become an informant.

He said he was paid about $12,000 to $13,000 for his help — all for time he missed work to help with the investigation.

In the recordings the jury heard Tuesday, the men discussed the morality of attacks. Some of the accused plotters said that it was permissible under Islam to attack military targets, but not civilians.

During one taped conversation, one of the suspects, Shain Duka, asks a group of men, “Where does it say in the Quran that you can’t do suicide bombs?”

A few moments later, Shain Duka says the suicide bombs deployed in Iraq against U.S. military targets were permissible. “The way they do in Palestine,” he said, referring to Israel, “I’m not for that.”