Muslims in NJ Plot to Kill US Soldiers

This is really an astonishing story. It brings to a head the fact that one need not be a card-carrying member of al-Qaeda to be driven by the same ideology. Really, is there such a thing as a card-carrying member? It seems like a pretty easy movement to join.

Requirements:

Wahhabi interpretation of Islam, hate America, plot to kill Americans, work for a Muslim conquest and domination of the world.

Reuters:
Suspected NJ Plotters Called Quiet, Different:
By Jon HurdleWed May 9, 7:15 PM ET

Whether they were anti-social and inconsiderate or just absorbed with their own lives, the Duka brothers and their extended family were certainly different, neighbors said on Wednesday. The three Yugoslav-born, ethnic Albanians, who were charged along with three accomplices with plotting to kill soldiers at a New Jersey army base, largely kept to themselves in this modest suburban community some 20 miles east of Philadelphia.

In interviews the day after the six men -- described by prosecutors as Islamic extremists -- were charged in federal court, neighbors said they had very little to do with the family but were struck by the large number of people -- apparently several generations -- who lived in the home. All expressed surprise at the charges and some doubted whether the group was capable of executing the plot considering that it was uncovered when they asked a local store to copy a video onto a DVD. The video showed the suspects in military training and calling for holy war, officials said.

Susan DeFrancesco, 46, a mother of three who lives across tree-lined Mimosa Drive from the Duka family, said the women living there didn't converse with other parents at the school bus stop where people of different ethnicities usually mixed freely. "It was a different house, they were not involved," DeFrancesco said. She said she was sad about the charges.

But Tom Greenjack, 68, whose property backs on to the Dukas' said he had disputes with them because of backyard noise from their children's swings and from the construction of a shed. "I didn't like them," he said.

The Duka brothers, who ran a roofing business, and one of the other plotters were ethnic Albanians motivated by the idea of holy war against the United States, rather than by any nationalist cause, said James Jatras, director of the American Council for Kosovo, a nonprofit group. However, Jatras said, "there is a definite al Qaeda link" with the Kosovo Liberation Army with which at least one of the plotters was associated.

Prosecutors said there was no evidence the men were linked to international groups.

The accused are Dritan, Shain and Eljvir Duka, all illegal immigrants to the United States; fellow ethnic Albanian Agron Abdullahu; Jordanian-born Mohamad Schnewer, a taxi driver and U.S. citizen; and Turkish-born Serdar Tatar. They are aged 22 to 28.

'VERY BIG SURPRISE'

At the Duka house, a two-story home with a faux stone balustrade and two miniature palm trees planted in the overgrown front yard, a woman in a headscarf said she had no comment to make to reporters.Another neighbor, Korean-born Han Koh, 45, said he believed the Dukas were very religious, and he would often hear "praying sounds" coming from their backyard.

He said the charges were a "very big surprise" and that he had found them sociable. The younger members of the household would sometimes play soccer in the front yard. "I didn't think they were bad people," he said. "They are different people. I didn't imagine they were planning such things."