Trial begins today for five Muslims accused of planning an attack at Ft. Dix in New Jersey. Were they hell-bent on carrying out the mission or just trying to sound tougher than they were? Jurors will need to sort that out. The U.S. has had mixed results in terrorism trials since 2001.
By George Anastasia
Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer
PHILADELPHIA — It was paintball and jihad, Dunkin’ Donuts and Osama bin Laden – terrorism come to suburbia.
And if the plot had been carried out, prosecutors say, the bodies of U.S. Army personnel would have been strewn across the fields of the Fort Dix military base.
Jury selection begins (Monday)for the trial of five foreign-born Muslims from the Philadelphia area charged with planning a jihad-inspired attack on the South Jersey military complex.
The government’s case is built primarily around secretly recorded conversations made by two cooperating witnesses who befriended the defendants. Those conversations, prosecutors say, detail “plans to attack Fort Dix and kill American soldiers” and include “discussions of the supposed justifications for such attacks rooted in radical jihadist ideology.”
But defense attorneys contend their clients talked a bigger game than they intended to play, portraying them as easily manipulated individuals led into a plot by paid FBI informants who created a conspiracy out of hollow words and empty threats.
