Jury in Fort Dix Plot to Be Anonymous September 15, 2007
Posted by Scarecrow in 09/06/07 Associated Press.trackback
Jury in Fort Dix Plot to Be Anonymous
CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) — An anonymous jury will hear the case of six men accused of plotting to attack soldiers at Fort Dix, a federal judge ruled Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Robert B. Kugler agreed with prosecutors’ concerns that jurors could be intimidated because of the nature of the charges and the possibility the media would pursue jurors if their names were released. He rejected defense complaints that such a jury would be biased.
“There is a need to limit the intrusion, potentially, into jurors’ lives,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven R. Stigall.
While the suspects are not accused of being part of a terrorist organization, there are groups in the U.S. that could sympathize with views attributed to the men, Kugler noted.
Rocco Cipparone, the lawyer for Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, argued that the suspects have little ability to harm jurors because they are being held in near-isolation at a federal detention center in Philadelphia.
The judge decided, over defense objections, that defense teams would know jurors’ hometowns, but not their names or addresses.
Keeping the names of jurors sealed is an unusual step, but it has been used in a number of federal cases, including some involving allegations of terrorism and organized crime.
The six were arrested in May and charged with planning to raid the New Jersey military installation, which is being used largely to train reservists bound for Iraq.
All six have pleaded not guilty.
Kugler has been pushing for a trial later this year, but defense lawyers said they might not be prepared by then to defend a case that involved hundreds of hours of conversations recorded by two paid government informants. Translations of evidence in Arabic and Albanian won’t be completed for at least another six weeks, said Michael Huff, the lawyer for defendant Dritan Duka.
Five of the men — Shnewer, Serdar Tatar, Duka and Duka’s brothers Shain and Eljvir — face life in prison if convicted of conspiracy to murder military personnel. The sixth, Agron Abdullahu, is charged with weapons offenses punishable by 10 years in prison. His lawyer said he would move to have Abdullahu tried separately.
The suspects, all in their 20s, were born overseas but have spent many years living in Philadelphia’s southern New Jersey suburbs. Authorities said the six scouted out East Coast military installations to find one to attack but settled on Fort Dix largely because Tatar knew his way around from delivering pizzas to the base for his father’s restaurant.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hpU78Fwu6-swpC3MuWomEA9WYcCQ
