Man pleads guilty in Fort Dix case

CAMDEN, N.J. – A man pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiring to provide weapons to a group of men accused of plotting an attack on soldiers at Fort Dix.\nAgron Abdullahu, 25, faces up to five years in federal prison when he is sentenced Feb. 6.\nFederal prosecutors have portrayed the New Jersey resident as having the smallest role among the six men arrested in May in the case. The others are charged with conspiring to kill military personnel – a crime punishable by life in prison.\nAbdullahu, a former supermarket baker, admitted letting illegal immigrants use his legally owned Beret 9 mm pistol and a Yugoslav-made semiautomatic rifle. Abdullahu told a judge that he knew it was illegal for the others to possess weapons but did not know it was against the law for them to use guns at a firing range.\nThe alleged plot to kill U.S. troops was not mentioned during Wednesday’s hearing. His public defender, Richard Coughlin, said afterward that Abdullahu made no deal to cooperate with prosecutors against the other defendants.\nAbdullahu will not testify against them because he has no information about and was not involved in any terror plot, Coughlin said.\n“My client was essentially used by these other individuals,” Coughlin said. “It was never a ‘Fort Dix Six.’ It was a ‘Fort Dix Five’ plus one other person. That was my client.”\nFederal prosecutors declined to comment on Abdullahu’s plea Wednesday.\nAbdullahu was indicted on charges of providing weapons to illegal immigrants, a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit that crime, which carries a maximum sentence of five years.\nAuthorities have said that while Abdullahu provided the weapons to the other men in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains during trips in January 2006 and February 2007, he resisted the idea of participating in an attack.\nAbdullahu, an ethnic Albanian born in the Serbian province of Kosovo, fled with his family and was granted asylum in the United States eight years ago. \nAuthorities said the men charged in the plot scouted out East Coast military installations to find one to attack but settled on Fort Dix largely because one of them knew his way around from delivering pizzas to the base for his father’s restaurant.\nThe installation, which is being used largely to train reservists bound for Iraq, was not attacked.