U.S. Terror Plot To “Kill As Many Soldiers As Possible” Smashed
Posted May 8, 2007 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
It was a perilous plot that would have renewed echoes of the 911 terror attacks on New York. And it could have happened right next door. Six men have been arrested and charged with planning to attack Fort Dix, a U.S. army base in New Jersey. The goal of the alleged terrorists – kill as many soldiers as possible before authorities caught up to them. The accused are all alleged to be Islamic extremists and literature from Osama bin Laden was found among their possessions.
The dire plan was apparently discovered early in its genesis when one of the men came into a local copy shop and asked to have what the proprietor termed a ‘disturbing video’ transferred to DVD. The tape showed 10 men firing assault weapons and shouting slogans about jihad in Arabic. Six of those charged appeared in that startling footage. The FBI managed to infiltrate the group using an informant and later set up a sting to sell them automatic weapons. That’s when authorities moved in.
Officials believe the six men trained for their suicide mission in the Pocono Mountains, and had been living in the U.S. for some time, where they covertly conducted secret surveillance at other military bases. But in the end, they chose the New Jersey site. “If you want to do anything here, there is Fort Dix and I don’t want to exaggerate, and I assure you that you can hit an American base very easily,” suspect Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer is heard saying in a secretly taped conversation last August.
So why choose the unlikely base, which is mainly used to train reservists? The answer is stunningly simple: one of those accused apparently worked as a pizza deliveryman and regularly brought food to the complex, giving him an “in” that wouldn’t have raised any suspicions.
See the criminal complaint document
