Hitting the news yesterday is of course the story of Fort Dix in the US and the four Albanians from Kosovo who wished to go on a killing spree and "kill as many soldiers as possible". The catchy phrase of "Jihad in Jersey" has emerged as the news reports and over-reports about the break-up of a non-terrorist-organization-affiliated group of misfits who gave a DVD of jihad messages to a video store clerk to duplicate who in turn alerted authorities. However, one important point not widely mentioned in the news print is that the video showed ten men in the video but only six were arrested.
One of the accused has been described as a "sniper in Kosovo" which may mean that he was a former member of the KLA. An interesting little fact is that Fort Dix was the home to some 4000 Kosovo Albanian refugees during the war. Later it emerged that one of the suspects, Agron Abdullahu, was a refugee that came to Fort Dix. Sedar Tatar, a suspect born in Turkey, allegedly knew the layout of the base due to delivering pizzas there although his father denied the deliveries.
The cousin, Elez Duka, of the three Albanian brothers (Dritan, Shain, and Eljvir Duka) from Kosovo said that the charges were ridiculous and denied that the brothers could have been involved in such a plot. Elez even goes as far to suggest that "I expect an apology" as for a community of 15,000 cannot believe that one of their own would be involved in a terrorism plot in the US because "we were always thankful to America for its support during the wars in Kosovo and Macedonia". Of course, a point that should be mentioned is that none of the brothers were actually in Kosovo during the 1999 war as they all entered the US some 20-years ago and overstayed their visas. Another relative Ramiz Duka however stated that changes were visible in the brothers starting about three years ago. The brothers reportedly began to lecture other Muslims about Islam and strained familial relations to the point where the brothers stopped associating with the rest of the family in America.
It will be interesting to see the information as it comes forward as for some time now, critics have been saying that extremist Islam has been taking a foothold in the Balkans and that White Al-Queda (or Islamic terrorism) is becoming more of a threat. There have been several recent news stories about Wahabis and terrorist training camps being raided in Serbia.
