Inventing-Terrorists-study

manipulation to try to create an interest in jihad. They asked the men todownload jihadist videos, taunted them for their lack of resolve to takeaction, and followed them around with hidden tape recorders to recordevery word spoken. When the others were not present, one agent talked ingeneral terms with one of the targets, Mohammed Shnewer, about howsomeone could theoretically attack the Fort Dix army base. In response tothe agent’s repeated demands, another defendant, Serdar Tatar, gave theagent a map of the Fort Dix base, which his father used to deliver pizzathere. (Tatar thought that the agent was suspicious and reported him to thelocal police, who told him not to worry about it.) The other agent thenpersuaded the Duka brothers to buy some guns, supposedly for targetshooting in the Poconos, so they would not have to wait in line at publicshooting ranges.At this point, the whole group was arrested and charged withconspiracy to attack Fort Dix, even though no plans had been made toattack anything and most of the defendants had never had any conversationabout any plan to attack Fort Dix. The government claimed that the menhad formed a conspiracy to commit jihad, and so under the law eachmember of the conspiracy was responsible for the acts of every othermember, even if he knew nothing about the acts. The Dukas wereresponsible for Shnewer’s conversations with the agent about how totheoretically attack Fort Dix, although they knew nothing about it. And theDukas and Shnewer were responsible for the map of Fort Dix that Tatarhad obtained from his father. This illustrates a typical government strategy,which is to try and divide defendants by using them differently, in the hopethey will attack each other at trial. Since no one person knows the whole“plot,” anything bad becomes “foreseeable” and is therefore attributable toB-15