6 Charged In Plot To Attack Army Post

Six foreign-born Muslims - half of whom are illegal immigrants - were arrested today for plotting to attack the Army's Fort Dix and massacre scores of U.S. soldiers - a plot investigators say was foiled when the men took a video of themselves firing assault weapons to a store to have the footage put onto a DVD. The defendants, all men in their 20s from the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East, include a pizza deliveryman suspected of using his job to scout out the military base.

Authorities said there was no direct evidence connecting them to any international terror organizations such as al-Qaida. But several of the men said they were ready to kill and die "in the name of Allah," according to court records. Their goal was "to kill as many soldiers as possible" in attacks with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and guns, prosecutors said.

The Muslim arrestees also allegedly spoke of attacking a Navy installation in Philadelphia during the annual Army-Navy football game, when the place would be full of sailors, and conducted surveillance at other military installations in the region. Investigators infiltrated the group with an informant well over a year ago and bided their time while they secretly recorded the defendants. One defendant, Eljvir Duka, was recorded as saying: "In the end, when it comes to defending your religion, when someone is trying attacks your religion, your way of life, then you go jihad."

Five of the men are charged with conspiracy to kill U.S. military personnel; the sixth man was charged with aiding and abetting illegal immigrants in obtaining weapons. Four of the men were born in the former Yugoslavia, one was born in Jordan and one came from Turkey. All had lived in the United States for years. The men trained by playing paintball in the woods in New Jersey and taking target practice at a firing range in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, where they had rented a house. They often watched terror training videos, clips featuring Osama bin Laden, a tape containing the last will and testament of some of the September 11 hijackers, and tapes of armed attacks on U.S. military personnel, erupting in laughter when one plotter noted that a Marine's arm was blown off in an ambush.

In court documents, prosecutors said the suspects came to the attention of authorities in January 2006 when a shopkeeper alerted the FBI about a "disturbing" video he had been asked to copy onto a DVD.