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BBC NEWS | Americas | Arrests over US army base 'plot'

Posted on May 8th, 2007 by martijn.
Categories: International Terrorism.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Arrests over US army base ‘plot’
Arrests over US army base ‘plot’
Map showing New Jersey
Six men have been arrested on charges of plotting to attack Fort Dix army base in the US state of New Jersey.

The men allegedly planned to use automatic weapons to enter the base and kill soldiers there, according to officials quoted by US media.

The six were due to appear in court in Camden, New Jersey, on Tuesday.

Local media reports suggested the six were nationals of the former Yugoslavia who had been living in the US for some time.

Fort Dix is used for military training, particularly for reservist soldiers.

The six men will face charges of conspiracy to kill US servicemen, a spokesman for the US Attorney’s Office in Newark, New Jersey, said.

Five of the suspects were arrested in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, on Monday, about 20 miles (32 km) south-west of Fort Dix.

According to local media reports, the men had allegedly trained in weapons use over recent months in the Pocono Mountains area of north-eastern Pennsylvania.

A spokeswoman for the FBI said a news conference was planned for later on Tuesday to discuss the arrests.

According to CNN:‘Islamic radicals’ arrested in plot to kill Fort Dix soldiers

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Six “Islamic radicals” involved in a plot to kill U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey were arrested Monday night, the U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey said Tuesday.

One of the suspects was born in Jordan, another in Turkey, the U.S. attorney’s office said. The rest are believed to be from the former Yugoslavia, “either U.S. citizens or living illegally in the United States,” the office said in a statement.

“Their alleged intention was to conduct an armed assault on the army base and to kill as many soldiers as possible,” according to the statement.

The six are expected to appear in U.S. District Court in Camden on Tuesday afternoon, the U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement.

The district attorney scheduled a news conference at 2:30 p.m. ET to discuss the case.

The men were planning to use automatic weapons to shoot soldiers at the Army post, according to a federal law enforcement source and a senior government source.

The men, some of whom were related to each other, had been doing surveillance and planning “for a while,” and they trained in the Poconos Mountains in northeastern Pennsylvania, according to the federal law enforcement source.

They played paintball and test-fired weapons, a law enforcement source said.

New Jersey state troopers and the FBI were involved in investigating and arresting the suspects. An informant played a key role in the investigation, the sources said.

One of the sources said there is a video and an audiotape of the planning.

The Newark Star-Ledger reported on its Web site that the men took a videotape of their practice sessions to a store to have it burned to a DVD, and that a store employee contacted the FBI because of the video’s contents.

Sources told the Star-Ledger the men were lured to a meeting with an FBI informant posing as an arms dealer. The newspaper’s sources requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.

While authorities are glad to have arrested them, the individuals are “hardly hard core terrorists,” one law enforcement source said.

Another source said that while the allegations are “troubling,” they are “not the type that made the hair on the back of your neck stand up.”

Fort Dix is used to train members of the Army Reserve and National Guard for missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world.

It was used in 1999 to house ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo, according to the Defense Department Web site.

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