An update on our lovely guests in Jersey:
One drove a cab, three were roofers. Another worked at a 7-Eleven and a sixth at a supermarket. Their alleged plot to attack Fort Dix was foiled by another blue-collar worker: a video store clerk.Six foreign-born Muslims were accused Tuesday of planning to assault the Army base and slaughter scores of U.S. soldiers with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.
The unidentified clerk is being credited with tipping off authorities in January 2006 after one of the suspects asked him to transfer a video to DVD that showed 10 men shooting weapons at a firing range and calling for jihad, prosecutors said.
"If we didn't get that tip," said U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, "I couldn't be sure what would happen." FBI agent J.P. Weis called the clerk the "unsung hero" of the case.
Authorities said there was no direct evidence connecting the men to any international terror organizations such as al-Qaida. But several of them said they were ready to kill and die "in the name of Allah," prosecutors said in court papers.
Weis said the U.S. is seeing a "brand-new form of terrorism," involving smaller, more loosely defined groups that may not be connected to al-Qaida but are inspired by its ideology.
"These homegrown terrorists can prove to be as dangerous as any known group, if not more so. They operate under the radar," Weis said.
Four of the arrested men were born in the former Yugoslavia, one was born in Jordan and one came from Turkey, authorities said. Three were in the United States illegally; two had green cards allowing them to stay in this country permanently; and the sixth is a U.S. citizen.
The six - Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, 22; Dritan Duka, 28; Shain Duka, 26; Eljvir Duka, 23; Serdar Tatar, 23; and Agron Abdullahu, 24 - were ordered held without bail for a hearing Friday.
A very long and interesting article follows from there, It wouldn't be complete though without a jack-in-the-box Muslim lawyer popping up to say this has nothing to do with Islam. This one's the silliest yet, saying that using the term "Islamic militant" sends the message that the two are synonymous -- as if the mention of "rye bread" suddenly makes you forget about the existence of whole wheat. These men were from three different foreign countries -- in their case Islam was the unifier. That they yelled "Allahu Akbar" and not "Remember the Alamo!" while they honed their marksmanship offers no small clue as to what they're about.
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Why does the media insist on calling these guys homegrown terrorists? They weren't grown here in the US, they were grown in the usual islamic hellholes: the Balkans, Turkey, Jordan. They came to the US, took advantage of our lax immigration enforcement and turned the opportunity to live a good, decent life into an attempt to kill their host.
The US should prosecute them all, deport the non-citizens, and try the naturalized citizen for treason.
I thought that was silly too. Timothy McVeigh was a "homegrown terrorist" -- not these guys. These were foreigners.
Posted by: Donnah at May 9, 2007 06:42 PMOh snap! Turns out the jihadis here illegally were in the country for 23 years! Since they were 1 to 6 years old. So I guess they are homegrown. 8-(
Dammit