Mohamed Mitty

The washingtonpost.com stirs up a little xenophobia in Cherry Hill.  Could your Muslim neighbor be plotting to slit your throat and rape your wife? Stay tuned for our exclusive report on Action News:

For this bedroom community in the shadow of the Philadelphia skyline, they would become the accused jihadists next door -- their arrest immediately shattering assumptions both here and beyond about who Islamic militants are.

Experts have warned that the next big terrorist threat will come from homegrown extremists, unaffiliated with al Qaeda but harboring resentments fostered by materials easily available from the Internet. ...

They live in a garden-variety subdivision like those on the outskirts of cities from Washington, D.C., to Seattle -- once-homogeneous communities now quickly becoming ethnically and racially mixed. Their children play soccer and video games with the neighbors' kids; they hawked their roofing business at Friday prayers.

Well, goddamn, things were just so much better when the suburbs were homogeneous.  Trying to amp the danger, the reporter unintentionally injects a little comedy:

They were also no strangers to the police. Tatar and the Dukas were habitual offenders, stopped dozens of times a year for speeding, illegal passing and driving without a license. Dritan Duka pleaded guilty in 2000 to possession of drug paraphernalia and Shain Duka to possession of marijuana -- low-level charges that at the time did not trigger immigration background checks.

Only one brother had a driver's license, and only briefly. But they drove anyway and were ticketed regularly by Cherry Hill police -- including four citations in one five-week period for Dritan Duka. The three had their driving privileges suspended -- meaning they could not even apply for a license -- 54 times in less than a decade.

Wow, how devious of them to hide in plain sight like that: They were just pretending to be fuckups, right? I mean, right?

This is why I hate the law on conspiracy. All you need is a provocateur to nudge things along and then offer to supply the illegal means, and if the marks bite, you got them. Except, what have you got? I have no doubt that a suburban federal jury will convict the guys eventually, but I think if the informant had never offered, they would never have gotten their act together enough to try to buy guns:

[In a taped conversation, one of the suspects said] wanted the informer to lead the attack, according to a federal complaint. “I am at your services,” the young man is quoted as telling the informer, who had presented himself as an Egyptian with a military background. ...

The informer, sent to penetrate a loose group of men who liked to talk about jihad and fire guns in the woods, had come to be seen by the suspects as the person who might actually show them how an act of terror could be carried off.

Indeed, over the months that followed, as the targets of the investigation spoke with a sometimes unfocused zeal about waging holy war, the informer, one of two used in the investigation, would tell them that he could get them the sophisticated weapons they wanted. He would accompany them on surveillance missions to military installations, debating the risks, and when the men looked ready to purchase the weapons, it was the informer who seemed to be pushing the idea of buying the deadliest items, startling at least one of the suspects.

And:

Without doubt, in most of the instances described in the complaint, the informer seems to be merely facilitating the menacing plans of the suspects or following along. But on some occasions, the informer appears to have played a slightly more provocative role. ...

The complaint suggests that the informer quickly began to establish a rapport with Mr. Shnewer, apparently one of the group’s leaders. ...

Months elapsed without significant developments. The complaint indicates that in October 2006, seven months after the informer first entered the ranks of the men, it might have been the informer who helped jump-start another suspect, Serdar Tatar, who still had not followed through on his promise to get a map of the base from his father’s pizzeria near Fort Dix. The two men were discussing Fort Dix, the complaint said, when the informer “expressed anger at the United States.”

“You want to make them pay for something that they did,” Mr. Tatar said to the informer, according to the complaint. “O.K., you need maps?”

Soon, Mr. Tatar provided the map, the complaint says.

In November, it was the informer who volunteered that he might have a source who could provide the machine guns and heavier arms the men had long been talking about.

“Shnewer expressed interest,” the complaint says.

Shnewer drove for Lamis Cab in Philly. I don't think I ever recall using Lamis, but maybe..... Anyway:

And when efforts to finally get the more potent weapons seemed close to producing results, the informer presented a list of possible arms that could now be bought. The list included fully automatic machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. But it was the men who scaled back their ambitions.

In fact, one of the suspects, Dritan Duka, seemed taken aback by the informer’s listing of the heavy artillery. Mr. Duka appeared to ask the informer if there was anything more he should know about the informer’s background or intentions, including whether he was religious. Asked why he seemed alarmed, Mr. Duka said to the informer, “There was some stuff on the list that was heavy.” And he added an expletive.

Whew, better not get the heavy stuff, dude. We just want to play pretend jihadi. Here, smoke up with me. Let's watch that video again. Cool.

A comment by "John" over at The Lede:

I actually went to highschool with these guys. As far as I recall, they were not Muslims at the time. The one I remember speaking to, Shane, was an idiot and, by my impression, a pathological lier. He was extremely Americanized, listened to hip-hop, smoked pot, played video games, and told tall tales about the girls he and his brother would date.

It sounds to me like these terrorists, who appeared to not have enough guns to actually perform the act they were plotting, were just a bunch of easily influenced idiots who got themselves caught up in an FBI terrorist investigation.

Yup. Fuckups delivering pizza (or not) and working the building trade, fantasizing about being scary and powerful on the weekend.

Comments

[Aquagirl]

I have thought from the moment this story broke that these guys are no different from young disenfranchised losers all over the country, sitting around drinking beer and smoking dope and talking about how they're going to fuck up this or that dude. Or make a big score on a drug sale or rob a bank or ... 99% of which comes to nothing. But this is the big scary because these guys were Msulim instead of white. It just goes to prove how ridiculous the whole concept of this war on terror is. This is our big terror moment? ALmost six years of fucking with the Constitution because of some pizza delivery guys whose mouths are writing checks their ass can't cash? Pathetic.

[Mithras]

Well, if I had ridden in his cab, and had known he was a terrorist, then ... no tip for him!

[Michele]

These guys remind me of the dudes arrested in Miami almost exactly a year ago for planning to blow up the Sears Tower. I blogged about it at the time, pulling a bunch of arguments out of my ass and concluding that the Miami crowd were the gang that couldn't shoot straight, nothing more than a bunch of disenfranchised young men bragging and shooting the breeze.

http://jurisdoctor.typepad.com/drexel_student_law/
2006/06/arrests_of_home.html

The original CNN article I linked to is still there but no longer has a photo.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/06/23/miami.indictment/

I never heard any follow-up to that case and a quick google and wikipedia search turns up nothing new.