5 men convicted of conspiracy to kill US soldiers

5 men convicted of conspiracy to kill US soldiers

news.yahoo.com

CAMDEN, N.J. – Five Muslim immigrants accused of scheming to massacre U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix were convicted of conspiracy Monday in a case that tested the FBI's post-Sept. 11 strategy of infiltrating and breaking up terrorist plots in their earliest stages. The men could get life in prison when they are sentenced in April.

The five, who lived in and around Philadelphia for years, were found guilty of conspiring to kill U.S. military personnel. But they were acquitted of attempted murder, after prosecutors acknowledged the men were probably months away from an attack and did not necessarily have a specific plan. Four defendants were also convicted of weapons charges.

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I'm glad to see the FBI is actually being proactive but I do wonder about the validity of the claims. Saying you want to kill someone should not necesarily (never could spell that one) a crime. I think we have all probably claimed we wanted to kill someone before. This makes me worry that something I say could eventually be used to convict me of a crime, even with no intention of committing said crime.

news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Don't really know whether these people intensionally intended to attack US military personnel, or they were baited to do it. It's hard to say on this one.

But if it turns our the Government was baiting them, that's disgusting. It would be like, "we're running out of terrorists, so we need to create new ones".

Anything to keep the war going.

I don't know why we even wasted tax dollars on this. They were here illegally, they purchased illegal weapons. They should have been sent home and let their country deal with them. They don't deserve our prison system, which I'm sure is a lot nicer then what they would face in their home land.

I would feel differant if they lived here legally.

That's a good point, if they were in the country illegally, and illegally purchased weapons, that's grounds for prosecution right there. Why drag it out with further proceedings?

Now, if it were the conspiracy to murder charge alone I'd be seriously questioning it. The idea that they're sentencing people to life in prison without even a plan for their crimes being laid out is pretty unsettling.

But given that they recently immigrated illegally, and illegally purchased weapons, it shows at least a little credibility to the accusation.


Though... one day this; "They were secretly thinking about doing harm" type of thinking is going to come back and bite us in the rear.