Meeting exposes Fort Dix 5 frame-up

The Fort Dix 5 defendants—Mohamed Shnewer, Serdar Tatar, and Eljvir, Dritan and Shain Duka—were unjustly sentenced to staggering prison terms for allegedly conspiring to kill soldiers at the Fort Dix, N.J., military base in 2007. These young, working-class Muslim immigrants were convicted on Dec. 23.

Shnewer, Dritan and Shain Duka received life imprisonment plus 30 years. Eljvir Duka was sentenced to a life term. Tatar was sentenced to 33 years in jail plus lifetime probation. All of them insist that agent provocateurs, unethical informants and an unfair trial led to their convictions.

When the sentencing hearings began on April 28, District Court Judge Robert B. Kugler explained federal guidelines. After Sept. 11, 2001, new “enhanced terrorism” guidelines increased potential prison sentences.

For instance, Dritan Duka was given 51 points, the most points the judge had ever seen; 18 points came from enhanced sentencing. Defense lawyers objected to the use of enhanced sentencing, arguing it was not justified since there were no victims. After the hearings, they explained that the prison terms would have been shorter without enhanced sentencing.

Defendants were brought to separate sentencing hearings in handcuffs and waist and ankle chains. As they were led to their seats, they smiled at their family members in the courtroom. U.S. marshals stood near the spectators’ seats. Police cars ringed the building. There was airport-like security on the first floor and outside the courtroom on the fourth floor.

After family and friends gave character testimony, each prisoner addressed the court.

Dritan Duka said there was no plot by the defendants, but “there was a conspiracy against us, created, produced, and directed by the U.S. government.”

Before sentencing Shain Duka, the judge argued prejudicially that the defendants were taped only when the informants were present. He asserted that the lack of evidence on tape “does not concern me.”

Shain Duka yelled, “I am innocent! I am innocent! I am innocent! I did not conspire!” and “This was a snare by the government, full of foul play and corruption. ...” He called for “an independent, honest and thorough investigation,” which he guaranteed “would end up like the dropped conviction of Alaska Senator Stevens.”

Family members will continue to fight for their imprisoned loved ones, and defense attorneys have filed notices to appeal the court decisions.

Support meeting April 23

The defendants’ family members and a representative of Project Support and Legal Advocacy for Muslims (Project SALAM) spoke at a meeting in support of the Fort Dix 5 in Philadelphia on April 23.

The evening’s speakers revealed how they were framed, that Homeland Security continues to harass their families, and that more than 400 other Muslim immigrants have experienced the same systematic injustices.

Zurata Duka, the mother of three of the defendants, their 17-year-old brother, Burim Duka, and Leila Duka, Dritan Duka’s 11-year-old daughter, addressed the meeting. Mohamed Schnewer’s sister, Inas Schnewer, and his mother, Faten Schnewer, also spoke.

Preemptive prosecution was central to the FBI’s case. The men never met at any time to plan the supposed crime, but, said Burin Duka, “Judge Robert B. Kugler told the jury the prosecution did not have to prove they made up a plot.”

Zurata Duka complained that the judge would not allow sections of the tape in which her sons told the informants, “Violence against soldiers was ‘haraam’–forbidden and wrong.”

Leila Duka moved the audience with her account of her four younger siblings crying at night, asking, “‘When is Daddy coming home?’ I know my father and uncles are innocent, and they will always be innocent.”

Family members told of continuing FBI surveillance, especially of Burim. They said agents have harassed character witnesses who volunteered to testify at the sentencing hearing. Faten Schnewer reported, “Our friends were afraid to come tonight. They put fear in the heart of every Muslim here that if you are involved in anything you will be convicted.”

Project SALAM defends Muslims

Lynn Jackson of Project SALAM described the U.S. government’s unconstitutional model of law enforcement since Sept. 11, 2001, as “preemptive prosecution”: defendants are prosecuted before they commit a crime. She charged that the combination of preemptive prosecution, which is illegal and wrong, with use of agent provocateurs and informants to entrap innocent people is “deadly.”

She described the cases of Imam Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossain in Albany, N.Y., where the government used “a convicted Muslim criminal to be an agent provocateur.” They were set up in an FBI-sting operation and are each unfairly serving 15-year sentences for money laundering.

Jackson told of Dr. Rafil Dhafir, who raised money for starving Iraqi children. Though the government could not prove claims that he was financing terror in Iraq, the FBI succeeded in preemptively prosecuting him for a “questionable charge of Medicare fraud.” Dhafir is serving a 22-year sentence in “Little Guantánamo,” a prison designed for Muslim “terrorists.”

According to Jackson, Syed Fahad Hashmi is being held in solitary confinement while awaiting trial on an unjust charge of providing material support for terrorism.

These are just a few of more than 400 miscarriages of justice by the FBI and the Department of Justice of which Project SALAM has become aware. The group was formed in August 2008 “to record as many stories of abuse by the judicial system as possible, and to advocate for new policies that will not convict innocent people who have not committed any crime.” Among its co-sponsors are attorney Lynne Stewart and the Muslim Solidarity Committee. (See www.projectsalam.org.)