Politics

The New Jersey Six

|


The Wash Times has an account of the six New Jersey residents who have been arrested for allegedly planning to attack Fort Dix in the southern part of the Garden State:

The men were identified in court papers as Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, 22, of Cherry Hill, a U.S. citizen born in Jordan and employed as a cabdriver in Philadelphia; Serdar Tatar, 23, of Philadelphia, born in Turkey and legally residing in the U.S. who worked at a 7-Eleven convenience store in Philadelphia and as a deliveryman at his father's pizzeria: and Agron Abdullahu, 24, of Buena Vista, N.J., an ethnic Albanian born in the former Yugoslavia who is legally residing in the U.S. and works at a Shop-Rite Supermarket.

Also identified were three brothers, Eljvir Duka, 23, Dritan Duka, 28, and Shain Duka, 26, all of Cherry Hill, who are ethnic Albanians born in the former Yugoslavia who reside illegally in the U.S. and operate Colonial Roofing and National Roofing.

The crew has been under FBI surveillance since January 2006, when one of them brought a DVD to Kinko's for copying. Said DVD showed the six shooting guns and shouting Islamic slogans; the clerk alerted the authorities. The six were arrested after they tried to buy automatic and semi-automatic weapons from an undercover agent.

More details here. Assuming the charges pan out (they don't always), this seems like a good instance of police work.

The cable coverage I've seen so far has been stressing the "illegal immigrant" angle–though I've yet to read an account of how the Duka boys actually got into the country. Given their country of origin, it seems unlikely they snuck across the Mexican border (the scenario that anti-immigration folks frequently trot out).