Did informant’s actions aid Fort Dix plotters?

Hard to win an entrapment defense
Among other things, even before the informant presented the list of weapons he said he could get, Dritan Duka unwittingly asked an undercover federal agent he had seen at a firing range about where he might buy an AK-47 or M-16, according to the FBI.

Archie, the defense attorney, conceded it is difficult to win an entrapment defense. “Basically, if they are just constantly pushing someone to go in a particular direction,” he said. “It’s just got to be obvious, obvious entrapment for it to fly.”

Attorney Henry Klingeman unsuccessfully argued that government agents had entrapped London merchant Hemant Lakhani, convicted in New Jersey in 2005. Lakhani was caught in a sting trying to arrange the sale of at least 50 shoulder-fired missiles for shooting down American airliners. He is serving a 47-year prison sentence.

“In the post-9/11 era, the entrapment defense is basically useless,” Klingeman said. “For a defendant, merely saying he wishes he could do harm to America, the jury has heard enough.”

Failed in 2003 terror case
Entrapment also failed as a defense in the case of Shahwar Matin Siraj, who was convicted in New York City of plotting to blow up the Herald Square subway station in 2003. Authorities had recruited an Egyptian man as an informant.

Siraj’s lawyer, Martin R. Stolar, argued at trial that Siraj had no interest in violence until the informant showed him photos of prisoners being abused at Abu Ghraib and told him it was his duty as a Muslim to retaliate. Siraj was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years.

“The government often overreaches in its zeal to give itself a pat on the back,” Stolar said. “In my case, my position was that they created the crime in order to solve the crime so that they could then claim a victory in the war on terror.”

Vincent Henry, director of the Homeland Security Management Institute at Long Island University and a 21-year veteran of the New York Police Department, said he is convinced that the Fort Dix defendants really were capable of pulling off such an attack.

“I’m sure they were,” he said. “The arrests were made as they were on their way to purchase the weapons, or at least some of the weapons. They had seemed to plan it out very, very well.”

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