Vol. 80/No. 5      February 8, 2016

 

Rally demands freedom for ‘Fort Dix Five’ prisoners

 
CAMDEN, N.J. — “My brothers are innocent,” Burim Duka said, speaking to reporters Jan. 6 as a hundred family members and other supporters of the “Fort Dix Five” rallied outside a hearing at the federal courthouse here. The charges against them were “100 percent manufactured,” he said.

In 2007 Dritan, Shain and Eljvir Duka, and friends Mohamad Shnewer and Serdar Tatar, were falsely charged with conspiracy to attack military personnel at Fort Dix as well as on weapons offenses.

Chris Christie, then U.S. attorney for New Jersey, brought the charges against the five as part of a wave of government-organized frame-ups and victimizations aimed at Muslims and Arabs after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The government used paid FBI informants with long criminal records who spent more than a year attempting to entrap the Duka brothers and their friends into joining a terrorist plot.

The five were never convicted of doing anything, but on fabricated charges of conspiracy. “That there isn’t more explicit evidence does not concern me and obviously didn’t concern the jury either,” District Judge Robert Kugler admitted as he sentenced them in April 2009.

Even though they weren’t charged with terrorism, prosecutors demanded a “terrorism enhancement” to their sentences, winning life terms for four of the five defendants. The Duka brothers have been held in separate high-security prisons in Colorado, Indiana, Virginia and Kentucky, brother Burim said, much of it in solitary confinement.

Zurata Duka, the three brothers’ mother, told the Militant that around two years ago family members saw new interest in exposing the frame-up.

The Washington Post ran a column June 29, 2015, by Radley Balko titled, “The Outrageous Manufactured Case Against the ‘Fort Dix Five.’” The Intercept, an online publication, published a story exposing the frame-up, including commentary from Shain Duka in prison.

The court heard motions filed by each of the Duka brothers to set aside their sentences because their court-appointed attorneys didn’t represent them properly. The lawyers “didn’t let them testify,” Firik Duka, their father, told reporters.

Supporters of the five have been holding weekly vigils outside the Camden courthouse since November. The next one is set for Feb. 12.
 
 
Related articles:
Bronx rally protests anti-Muslim assault
 
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home