The six men charged with plotting a paramilitary attack on Fort Dix pleaded not guilty at their arraignments in federal court in Camden yesterday.
Following those hearings, U.S. District Court Judge Robert B. Kugler held a conference with the defense attorneys and said he wanted to start the trial in early October.
"These defendants are being detained. . . . If the government can't prove its case, they shouldn't be in jail," Kugler said. "I'm going to push you. I'm going to be merciless."
The six defendants did not speak during either proceeding, other than to answer "yes" when asked if they understood their rights.
Several defendants, shackled at the waist and wearing olive prison jumpsuits, motioned and smiled to family members in the packed courtroom, and some mouthed words to them. One defendant, Serdar Tatar, mouthed, "I love you," to a group in the back row, including two sobbing women.
Kugler admonished both the defendants and their families, who communicated in turn.
"That will be the last time that happens in this courtroom," he said.
Five of the six were charged with planning to kill U.S. military personnel, an offense that carries a potential life sentence. The sixth defendant was charged with a weapons offense that carries a maximum 10-year term.
All six have been held without bail since being arrested on May 7.
The case includes more than 100 secretly recorded conversations made by two cooperating witnesses who managed to infiltrate the group. The FBI informants allegedly took part in a training session in February that included firearms practice and watching radical Islamic videotapes.
Kugler asked prosecutors if wiretaps or classified information were a part of the case, but the prosecutors said they weren't prepared to answer yet.
The indictment charges that five of the defendants - Mohamad Shnewer, 22; Tatar, 23; and brothers Dritan Duka, 28; Shain Duka, 26; and Eljvir Duka, 23 - "were inspired by . . . al-Qaeda, a foreign terrorist organization."
The Duka brothers are Cherry Hill residents who came to this country from the former Yugoslavia as children in the 1980s. They are ethnic Albanians, and authorities say they are illegal immigrants.
Shnewer, also of Cherry Hill, is a U.S. citizen who was born in Jordan and came to this country as a child. Tatar, who lived in Cherry Hill and then Philadelphia, is a legal resident alien who was born in Turkey.
